Amaurot
by Arachne
Summary: The Borg have stumbled upon an ancient and powerful device, and even the Q are worried. Meanwhile, an Oxford don finds herself transforming into something inhuman...
1. A Fragment

**Amaurot**

**Disclaimer: _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ is not mine, fairly obviously. It belongs to Paramount, and was created by Gene Roddenbury, may he rest in peace. All entities inhabiting said continuity, including the _Enterprise and its crew and the Borg, among others, are merely being borrowed. I promise not to spill coffee on them before I give them back, and I am not attempting to make any money out of them nor pass them off as my own. Oxford here is a kind of patchwork of Oxford-Reality interwoven with the fictional Oxfords belonging to, among others, Colin Dexter and Phillip Pullman. Said Oxfords will also be returned undamaged to their original owners. All denizens of Amaurot-Oxford, and certain elaborations of the Trek universe, are creations of my own warped imagination, and are not based on anybody living, dead, or risen from the grave.  All quotations and homages are referenced, either within the text or in the notes at the end of each chapter._**

**Warning: This is dark, gory and horrific. There are moments of violence, some very disturbing imagery, and a good deal of relatively mild swearing. I advise you to give it a miss unless you're over 13 and not easily disturbed**

**Chapter 1: A Fragment**

_"Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:_

_So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing._

_Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning._

_The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,_

_The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy_

_Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony_

_Of death and birth."___

_                                - T.S. Eliot, _Four Quartets: East Coker                                                               __

**The Delta Quadrant, 2367**

The planetoid is undistinguished - endless plains of cold grey sand, punctuated with outcroppings of black rock, under the clear black sky given by the barest wisp of atmosphere. Normally, such a ball of rock would have been beneath the interest of the Borg - it has never sustained life, except the most primitive bacteria deep beneath the surface, certainly never a technological civilisation. Which makes the object that is the reason for their presence even more remarkable. 

The object stands within a huge canyon, deep enough that only its very topmost spires appear at surface level. The energy readings it gives off indicate that it is some kind of machine, something that even dormant is drawing on vast reserves of energy. Sensor scans from the orbiting cube revealed veins of the same crystalline, semi-organic material that composes the machine underlying and penetrating the entire crust of the planetoid, together with a far greater than normal amount of energy being generated deep within the core. The planet is, in effect, little more than a housing for the machine. For the first time in centuries, the Borg have come across technology even more complex than their own. 

_Assign Trimatrix 753 to initial surface reconnaissance. _

The twelve drones materialise within the canyon that holds the visible body of the machine, and approach. The spires of pale crystal tower above them, as high as the central atrium of a cube, flickering with occasional dim pulses of grey-gold light. The drones spread out, circling the central machine, pausing to study the sweeping crystalline ridges that spread like roots away from the central tower. 

Seven of Twelve reports: _Detecting anomalies in the crystalline material suggesting synthetic origin. Variable optical/electrical conductivity, forming a self-correcting neural net._

Three of Twelve reports: _Detecting capillaries and vesicles within the structure filled with a carrier fluid.  Detecting multiple types of nanotechnology of semi-organic crystalline structure. _

Nine of Twelve reports: _Detecting structure of 99.62% similarity to Collective access interface port. _

_Nine of Twelve is to attempt interface and transmission of_ _data_.

The drone's arm moves up, as slick black tubules slide from its hand into the crystalline port.

Nine of Twelve reports: _Interface initiated. Accessing data._

Five of Twelve reports: _Detecting increase in power consumption of a factor of 6978.47_.

The spires begin to blaze with a frosty white-gold light, as panels of crystal shift from frosty translucency to transparency, revealing the sparkling carrier fluid flowing and bubbling behind them. A patch of gunmetal grey is already spreading from the access port, as Borg nanoprobes filter through, converting quasi-organic nanites for their own purposes.

Nine of Twelve reports: _It's… it's assimilating _back_…_

Fine tendrils of something as smooth and clear as molten glass loop down from the machine, whiplashing through Nine of Twelve's exoskeleton at wrists, throat, temples, spine. The drone is pulled up into the air, hanging limply from the fragile-seeming crystal filaments. The flow of data from Nine of Twelve disintegrates into a chaotic mass of emotion: vast, inchoate longings and ancient pain.__

A panel of crystal slides to one side, and the drone is pulled inside the machine, which is already beginning to alter, dully gleaming black metal spreading across one side, white-gold light turning chartreuse.

A shockwave of data blasts into the collective. A sudden, vertiginous sense of great age, and loneliness, and yearning for new ideas and new purpose tears through every drone. It is so very similar to what drives them, but infinitely rawer, infinitely more passionate. And behind the shockwave comes a terrible hunger, sucking information from the minds of the drones but never sated by  it. 

Until the wave of data breaks on the rock that is the Queen, and her icy certainty comes through the ravaged drones, to command what only she can ask. 

_Disconnect Nine of Twelve_. __

Dimly, she who was once Nine of Twelve becomes aware of a fine web of something that feels a little like glass, a little like cobweb and a little like nerve tissue covering her face. There is an odd, not unpleasant throbbing at her wrists and temples. She is floating, suspended in some kind of dense fluid. The voices of the others are gone from her mind. It occurs to her that she ought to be distressed by this. 

She is not aware of time passing, as she dreams within the machine. She dreams crumbling stone for it, and rivers, and trees. She dreams rain, and wind, and apple blossom. She dreams the cool smoothness of marble, and the copper-red-gold of dead leaves, and the smell of rooms full of old books. She is not aware of the machine's slow transformation, as the fluid around her becomes green that is a shade away from black, as dark cables and sheets of black metal form over and through darkening crystal. Nor is she aware of her own transformation, as her exoskeleton peels away, as bioimplants sink under her flesh to be covered without a trace with smooth pale skin. 

The collective watches as the machine is assimilated. The survivors of Trimatrix 753 continue to collect data, but no further attempts to interface are made. Under the calm guidance of the Queen, alterations are made in the command pathways, in order to protect the collective from the machine until it can be made part of them. 

She shifts within the dense liquid, a creation of the machine and her own long-buried dreams now. Her eyes _(eyes?)_ open, and she becomes aware again of her surroundings. The crystalline web is gone, replaced by cables and tubes that resemble those in a Borg maturation chamber.  She has no sense of orientation, but the opaque green-black fluid is clearing to reveal the transparent wall of the chamber. She turns her head to watch, momentarily surprised by the thick black mane of hair that billows around her neck like seaweed. Her arms are crossed over her chest, hands (_hands?_) curled into fists. Beneath them her body, although still slight and almost androgynous, is that of a grown woman and not the gauche and lanky adolescent she remembers being the last time she was able to look at herself.

The fluid is clear enough to see through now, and she makes out the patiently waiting drones outside.She is still dimly aware of the collective mind watching her, aware of their coldly predatory interest. They want her back. She should want nothing more then to rejoin them. She should not be horrified by them.

And she feels something ancient and vast uncoiling and sliding into action, something which never used to be part of her but feels more familiar than her own muscles and bones. The planetoid shimmers under her, and the drones are gone.  She tries to recoil in shock, but the embrace of the machine holds her pinned like a fly in amber. Cavernous reaches of memory and sensation are opening up in her mind, her own body feeling weak and helpless compared to this new technological part of her that encompasses the whole planet. The flood of information and power should be euphoric, this sudden entire mastery over her surroundings, this _becoming of her own surroundings. Instead, it terrifies her. She recoils from her apotheosis with the horror of a child in a nightmare. She wants nothing more than to flee, to run home and hide under the bed as she used to when she was a frightened, hurt little girl._

She curls in on herself, remembering and imagining Home as it was before she left, its layers of faded beauty and memory, the source of her dreams. __

A sigh of aeons-old longing and melancholy sweeps through her mind, and the tubes and cables pull free from couplings that in their turn sink smoothly and without trace into her flesh. The crystal panel slides open, and she is carried forwards in a tide of emerald fluid. 

Spluttering, she pulls herself up on her elbows. She is lying on short, damp grass under a clear indigo sky. The machine is nowhere to be seen, but there is music in the distance.


	2. The Wire in the Blood

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 2: The Wire in the Blood**

"_The trilling wire in the blood_

_Sings below inveterate scars_

_Appeasing long forgotten wars_."

                                 T.S. Eliot, _Four Quartets: Burnt Norton_

**Jericho****, ****Oxford****, 2002**

Anastasia Glass dreamed that roses were devouring her house. She dreamed that she got out of bed to see the windows choked with gnarled black briars, the fleshy white blossoms pressed against the glass. As a tendril of dark thorns slid under the sash, she turned to the bedroom door and ran downstairs. 

In the kitchen, the roses had already shattered the far window and were pouring in over the sink, across the cupboards. She turned and ran again, through the hall where black thorns were erupting through the cracks in the plaster, into the living room.

Here it was quiet. The roses were pressed against the windows, but were making no attempt to get through. Staring into the room, she realised why. Respect for the dead. The coffee table had been transformed into a catafalque of iron and glass, and on it lay Anastasia Glass, clad regally in a long black gown, crowned with green amber and silver, her dead face serene and her gloved hands folded around the long, thornless stem of a white rose.

She stepped forward, wondering what the etiquette was when one arrived at one's own funeral. It occurred to her that she should be horrified. 

Then her dead double began to sit up, and Anastasia finally did feel horror. The calm face of the corpse was not flesh, but a porcelain mask beneath a heavy black wig. Under the satin gown and velvet gloves was not a body, but a mass of writhing, fast-growing briars. The eyelids of the death mask fell open, and green leaves spilled out. Anastasia was frozen as the roses that consumed her twin threw off their human shape, ripping apart the grave-clothes in their incessant, ruthless drive to grow. Black branches whipped at her face. She recoiled, but not in time to avoid the sting of thorns at her neck. She twisted away, ran for the door, but it was already too late. Her neck was bursting into blossom as the roses spread within her. She could already hear their leaves rustling within her skull. She tried to cry out, but her throat was choked with thorns.

Then she was suddenly dragged into wakefulness, trying to scream through a raw throat. She glanced around her bedroom, drawing reassurance from the greyish half-light filtering through her windows, with no roses to be seen. The left side of her neck was throbbing, and she quickly put a hand to it, half expecting to feel supple, thorny briars and dense petals under her fingers. Instead, she touched warm skin and a trickle of wetness. She pulled her fingers away and saw blood on them. She probed the sore area again, more carefully, finding the raw edges of torn skin and, underneath them, something cold and hard. 

Rising from the bed, she walked over to the sink and splashed water over the bloody wound, whilst examining it in the mirror. As she turned her neck, the lump under the skin became visible, catching the light with a dull, blackish gleam. Under her touch, it felt as smooth and cold as metal, with fine tendrils of what felt almost like wire extending from it into her flesh, lacing through the muscle of her neck. As she picked at the tattered skin, tearing it away from the cool, metallic filaments just underneath, the throbbing pain intensified, building to a spike. There was a sudden burst of icy agony along her spine, and a dizzying sensation of free-fall. 

She regained consciousness slumped against the sink, shaking but unable to remember what she saw in those moments that terrified her so. The pain was subsiding, being replaced by a maddening prickling. She pulled herself upright, and looked in the mirror again. A star of dark metal had emerged fully from her neck now, and at its centre a greenish light was pulsing steadily, a little slower than her racing heart. 

***********

**The Alpha Quadrant, 2373**

Jean-Luc Picard dreamed he was standing on a narrow ledge of fragile white rock, looking down into the swirling waves of a cold black sea. Behind him, only sheer stone, no way back. He stared down into the sea, and felt the ledge crumble beneath his feet. Something - innumerable grey somethings, limned with ghostly green-gold phosporescence - moved in the water below, waiting for his inevitable descent. And as he stared, the crashing of the waves resolved into voices, thousands of voices pleading, coaxing, commanding, with one seductive female voice rising above them all, calling to him…  _You will return to us. You will be one with us again._

And then the ledge finally broke from the cliff, and Picard fell towards the dark sea, only to jolt awake, tangled in the sheets. The left side of his face was burning with dull pain, his right forearm and hand dead of feeling. Innumerable cold aches wove through his flesh and bones, memories of the implants that had made him Locutus. 

A few deep, ragged breaths, and the pain began to fade. Only to be expected. It couldn't have been more than six months since he'd faced the Borg last, since he'd stared into her silver eyes and been slammed cruelly to the assimilation table again and... _stop__ it_. 

He got out of bed, hoping that standing up would force his limbs to stop shaking. He'd had the dreams before. He knew how to deal with them. It wasn't as if this was as vivid as the dreams in which he'd relived his assimilation, or the dreams where Data had truly betrayed him and he had to watch the _Pheonix_ explode, taking the Federation and all his dreams with it, and then to feel the cutting devices slicing into himself as she watched and... _no__ more_. 

By the time Beverly Crusher arrived for breakfast, he was dressed and apparently entirely calm. It had been more difficult than usual to drive the dream out of his head this time. It hadn't been like the other ones. More dream and less recollection - vague and symbolic like a normal dream, even containing elements of a normal nightmare, like the plunge into wakefulness. Nothing he'd seen in the dream was clearly Borg, yet all laden with the dream-significance that had made him sure it _was_ indeed Borg. _So they've infected my very subconscious now. _

*******

**Jericho****, ****Oxford****, 2002**

"I'm making tea. D'you want some?"

The voice filtered through into her consciousness. _ Species 5618. Female. What the bloody hell am I on about?_

"D'you want a cup of tea, Anastasia?"

_I should recognise her._

"Hmm, what, sorry?" She pulled the covers down from o

ver her head and blinked in bewilderment round the room, mildly surprised to recognise it as hers: the Giger biomechanoids and Klimt allegories on the walls, the long black leather coat hanging on the door, the stack of books next to the laptop on the desk.

A sigh from the other side of the door. "Tea! D'you want some?"

"Tea is always a good thing."  Something felt wrong, oddly displaced.  "Shouldn't you be in lectures?"

"Been. Came back. It's one o'clock. I just stopped over to see if you wanted lunch, and Shazia let me in, cos you weren't answering your bell but she said you hadn't left the house this morning, and I wanted to check you were in, and see if you were okay, and if you wanted some tea."

A pause.

"Are you okay? You're sounding all weird and sort of distracted. Are you in the middle of something? I can go away and come back later if you like..."

"No. I'm not busy. I was just asleep."__

"Are you feeling all right? I mean, there's that flu thing going round, Gianni's got it, and it put my Information Engineering lecturer out for a week..."

"I just feel.. not quite right. I don't think it's flu." She stared for a moment at the ceiling, aware that it ought to be familiar and puzzled that it wasn't. The cotton sheets felt almost unbearably harsh against her dry and itchy skin. 

"Like I said, I can go away and come back later..."

"No. Make some tea, and there's bread and cheese for sandwiches.  I think there's some chutney left as well. I'll be down in about quarter of an hour." She felt oddly better for having made such a simple decision.

"Okay. See you in a bit. Look, are you sure you're okay? I can bring you some food up if you're not feeling well..."

"I'll be fine. Don't worry."

Booted steps clomped away from the door, then clattered off down the stairs at speed. Anastasia levered herself up and out of bed, shivering in the sudden rush of cold air that hit her when the blankets fell away. _Don't you just love the British weather. Other places get warm summers. Not us.  _

Something dark caught her eye as she stood up, a reddish-brown stain spreading over her pillow. She shivered again,  then put a hand to her neck. The plaster she'd put over the metal star had come unanchored, as the flesh of her shoulder and neck had split further to reveal fine ridges of cold metal tracing the lines of her collarbone. Another piece of metal had come through further down her neck, this one smaller and flatter. There was no pain, only a slight prickly tingle where metal met flesh. Her skin felt different, colder and almost scaly with dryness. She walked over to the wardrobe, pulled the door open to reveal the full-length mirror, and checked the extent of the damage. Her pyjama top was soaked in blood, her hair matted with it.  The darkly-gleaming metal was blatantly obvious against the deathly white skin of her neck.  _I'm blatantly not well. What am I saying, I'm blatantly not even **human, let alone ****well! **_

She wrapped her arms round herself, shivering violently. _Why doesn't that frighten me? I'm turning into a machine. Why am I not freaking out? And why am I so **cold?**_

With puzzled detachment, she watched herself throwing her bloody clothes in the bin, washing the blood from her skin and hair in the shower, taping a clumsy dressing over the raw edges of the broken skin, pulling on black leather jeans and a thick black  polo-necked sweater, and walking ever so calmly downstairs brushing out her damp hair. 

A young woman was waiting for her at the kitchen table, draining the last of her tea. "Bloody hell, you look crap!"

A pause. _Nineteen-year-old Caucasian female.__ Scarlet hair this time. Used to be electric blue. The over-dyeing must be wrecking it. Small. Skinny. Too many piercings. A bracelet of binary code tattooed round her left arm. Bright blue eyes, dark round the edges with sleep deprivation. Net-junkie pallor. Interesting face. Sharp. Clever. Cassandra Barraclough. I know her. She's an undergraduate.  An engineer. My friend. We played in the quiz team together. I helped her through her exams last year.  So why don't I feel pleased to see her? _

"Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Are you sure you're okay? You look really pale - not just normal sunlight-what's-sunlight pale, but all sort of greyish and I'm-having-a-heart-attack-and-in-intense-pain pale."

"I'm not having a heart attack, Cass. I'm not in any pain." Her skin was crawling where the metal was ripping its way out of it, but her cooling flesh felt no pain.

Cassandra jumped to her feet. "Yeah, you still sound weird. Not well. And why the huge sweater? It's boiling out!"

Anastasia noted dispassionately that the younger woman was wearing a vest top, with her multipocketed black jacket hanging off the back of her chair. _It's not cold. It's just me.  Maybe I should just say I've got flu after all. _Observing further, she also noted her chance to change the subject.

"Cass, why have you got duct tape round your hands?"

Cassandra glanced down, as if noticing it for the first time. "Well, last night Steve from St John's challenged me to a Quake III deathmatch. I'd been typing up my practical report all day, so I was getting a touch of the old repetitive strain whatsit, so I taped up my hands and wrists so's I could play. Don't look at me like that. The honour of the college was at stake."

"Cass, you do realise that is going to be very painful indeed when you try and get the tape off?"

"Yeah, well. I played. I won. I kicked the arse of the dark forces of St John's, in four hours of superb tactics and mindless virtual violence."

Anastasia felt herself tuning out Cassandra's enthusiatic rocket-by-rocket account of the game. She could hear a very quiet, almost subliminal rustling sound in the back of her head. No, not rustling... voices. Thousands of voices. Streams of passionless information, coiling round her brain stem. 

_Initiating analysis of data obtained from Nine of Twelve... _

_Further data required.  Initiate secondary-level assimilation and contact..._

_Initiating spatiotemporal pulse..._

And the machinery in her neck began to throb again, as something razor-sharp unfolded itself under her ribs, cold fire blossoming agonisingly in her chest. She was dimly aware of doubling over, vomiting dark blood onto the black and white linoleum, of Cassandra leaping to her feet, overturning the table and running to her side, before a greenish darkness took her. __


	3. Resistance

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 3: Resistance**

**The Delta Quadrant, 2373**__

_"Gasping - but somehow still alive,   
This is the fierce last stand of all I am. _

_Gasping - dying - but somehow still alive,   
This is the final stand of all I am." _

                The Smiths, "Well I Wonder"__

There was no light here, and near-perfect silence, broken only by the soft whine and hum of bionics. He stumbled a little further,  damaged servomechanisms tearing at his flesh with each step, blood streaming from a savage gash in his exposed, vulnerable face. He should have succumbed to stasis lock long ago, like the others, the mechanisms controlling his limbs shutting down to preserve essential biosystem functions. He'd overridden the hardwired imperative, forcing himself to keep moving .  He knew he was dying, could predict to the millisecond the time left until the last of his energy was drained, until his life-support systems finally shut down forever. Death was what he wanted, a quiet death in the caves deep beneath his planet, before they found him like they had the others. 

Another step, and he staggered against the cave wall as sensation left his right arm, ending some of the pain, marking one more step towards death. He kept moving, dragging the useless deadweight of metal and meat that had once been part of him, vision darkening. The further into the caves he could go, the less likely it would be that they'd find him still alive, still salvageable. Rather die than be assimilated_. _

A few more steps, and his legs failed him, the joints of his exoskeleton locking rigid as the muscle beneath turned weak as water. He fell forwards, toppled by his own momentum, to the sandy floor, succeeding in catching his weight on his left arm, rolling himself onto his side with the last of his strength. And the first and last of the individualised Borg lay still and alone in the dark, and waited for death. 

Death was the least he deserved. He should never have hoped that the Collective would ignore them - they were a threat, after all, a plague, a cancer, something to be expunged and wiped out.  He should have asked the _Enterprise_ crew to kill him while they had the chance, rather than let him go back. He'd brought so much misery, so much pain and death to his people, his friends. 

Talvor, half-crippled by Lore's experiments, the left side of her body nearly paralysed. One of the first Borg he'd saved from death at the hands of Lore's followers. He'd tried to help her, half-dragged her as they'd fled into the caves, knowing that the Collective would kill and reabsorb her if they took her. She'd died soon after, her scarred brain going into premature stasis lock followed by rapid death. She'd been one of the lucky ones.

Kelsus. He'd been one of the first to resist Lore, one of the ones who fled into the caves with him and helped him rescue Borg from the laboratories and execution cells. His trust in his new leader had never wavered, even to the moment when Collective drones had pulled him away from the fleeing individuals, driven assimilation tubules into his neck and wiped his mind. 

Goval. Young, no older physically than he was himself, he'd changed sides in the final confrontation, acted on his buried doubts and fought Lore. When the Collective came, he'd given up, surrendered himself to re-assimilation even as the last individuals had called to him to flee. 

Vision in his organic eye grew blurred as warm, salt fluid spilled down his cheek. Tears. The response of a singular mind to overwhelming emotion. He'd thought he was malfunctioning, maybe dying, when they'd brought him back to the ship as a nascent individual, and tears had formed in his eye at the thought of being assimilated again, forgetting friendship, forgetting ever being an individual. He'd come to understand what tears meant over the next few years: there had been so many strong emotions to overwhelm him. Fear and guilt, as he'd watched Borg killing each other and starving to death and known it was because of him, of his decision to return: anger, at what Lore did to his people and what he demanded of them: grief, at the deaths of his comrades from Lore's experiments, Lore's making of examples. All new, all unknown within the Collective, all agonisingly raw and powerful. 

Yes. Fitting to die here in this dark cave, the betrayer of the Borg, the brainwashed pawn of the Federation. Could he have caused more suffering and destruction if they had made him into a plague carrier?

 Then why had he resisted them till the end, choosing to die rather than be liberated from the burden of singularity? 

Because it was his burden. Because he was Hugh. And he'd die Hugh, and prove resistance was not futile. Because... being who he was, he couldn't do anything else. 

Vision in his prosthetic eye faded into darkness, and he became aware that his breathing was becoming increasingly laboured. Not long now. His pale lips twitched into a faint, almost triumphant smile. 

But then heavy footsteps impinged on his failing hearing, and a scarlet laser beam played over his fallen body. They'd found him. They'd salvage him, deprive him of his singular death. He struggled to move, to do something, to make himself die faster. His weakening lungs sucked in enough air for a cry of despairing, futile rage, as the Collective drones reached down for him.

And froze in place, as a flash of light tore through the darkness of the cavern. The light faded, leaving a soft glow, by which he could see another figure standing over him - a human, clad in a Federation uniform. 

"Oh, how very dramatic. The noble warrior, choosing death rather than surrender. There must be something about Jean-Luc that rubs off on people."

Hugh struggled to speak, to make his lungs take in enough air to form the sounds. "What... Who are you?"

"Do you mean your mighty Collective doesn't remember us? After everything we did for them? I'm hurt."

Realisation dawned, slow and terrible. "Q. You're Q."

"Well done. I'm sure it would have taken Jean-Luc several minutes of pompous dialogue to get that far. But then again, you are the superior species."

Hugh was not unfamiliar with the concept of sarcasm - Lore had been particularly fond of it - and could recognise its use in this being.

"Thank... you."

"For stopping those boring creatures assimilating you? The galaxy is full of Borg drones. You, on the other hand, are unique." A small, horribly knowing smile. "Well, not quite that unique."

"Locutus..."

"I suppose there is some similarity between you and Johnny. And... no, you won't have met Kathy's new pet. not in her current form at least. But..." That awful smile again. "Does 'Nine of Twelve' mean anything to you?"

Breathing was nearly impossible now. Only a few seconds left. "Please... dying."

"Oh yes. For a supposedly perfect species, you really do break too easily. Not that much better than humans."

Hugh felt anger mount. He'd wanted to die peacefully, in the dark and silence, not with this... creature... standing over him needling him. 

"Oh well, I suppose it's time Johnny and Bev took some responsibility for their little creation." 

Another flash of light. 


	4. The Survivors

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 4: The Survivors**

_"And I will show you something different from either_

_Your shadow at morning striding behind you _

_Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;_

_I will show you fear in a handful of dust."_

T.S. Eliot, _The__Waste__Land__ I: The Burial of the Dead_

**The Alpha Quadrant, 2373**

"Should I get some more tea?"

He was staring past her at the starfield flowing past, but without seeming to see it. It took a couple of seconds before he could drag his gaze away and respond. 

"Sorry, what was that, Beverly?"

She sighed and leant forward, deliberately making eye contact. 

"Do you want some more tea, Jean-Luc?" 

Another too-long pause, and a faint, puzzled frown. He seemed to her to be making an effort to force his thoughts away from whatever was preoccupying him and back to the mundane question of tea.

"No, I still haven't finished the last cup." 

He took a sip from the cup in front of him, blinking in mild surprise and distaste. She'd suspected it had gone cold over the past few minutes whilst he'd been staring into space, as a comfortable silence had stretched out into a worrying one. He'd seemed vaguely distant all morning, beyond his usual reserve. Now she looked closer, the physician in her searching for signs of distress, she noted his dark-circled and slightly unfocused eyes, skin a touch paler than normal, the permanent slight frown. Sleep deprivation, definitely. High stress levels, anxiety, exhaustion.

"Jean-Luc, what is it? You look worried sick."

She hadn't seen him this bad since before the Starfleet inquiry into the Borg incident, before he'd been cleared of the charges of mutiny levelled against him. The anxiety then had been understandable, as had the return of the nightmares from his... capture six years ago. He'd seemed to recover relatively quickly this time, strengthened by a clear, cathartic and unambiguous victory over the Borg. By the time he was back on active duty, after the enquiry, he'd seemed almost normal, but this morning he seemed to have relapsed.

He avoided her gaze. "I... didn't sleep well last night."

"The dreams again?" They both knew which dreams she meant. 

"Not quite. There was... I was on a ledge, over the sea. There were voices, calling to me. I fell. Then I woke." A casual shrug, another sip of cold tea. He was trying to make light of it. 

"It sounds like a perfectly normal anxiety dream to me, Jean-Luc."  There had to be more. She couldn't see how something that simple could have disturbed him so much. 

"It probably was." 

Damn him and his stiff upper lip. "But if it was just a normal anxiety dream, why are you still worrying?" 

"I'm not sure. Starfleet cleared me of all charges and the Borg are defeated. But..."

"You can't believe they're gone?" Another voice, a horribly familiar voice, joined the conversation. A third chair had appeared at the table, in which a dark-haired man in a Starfleet captain's uniform was lounging with a cup of tea.

"Q." Picard rose to his feet, diffuse anxiety suddenly focused. "What were you trying tell me this time, in your characteristically elliptical fashion?"

"Now, now, mon capitane, what makes you think I'm behind this dream of yours? And what makes you think I'd give the answer away so easily, if it was one of my little puzzles?" Q sighed theatrically. 

"No, Jean-Luc, the dream wasn't one of mine. I have much easier and more direct ways to communicate with you, as my appearance here goes to show. Interrupting your little tryst with the good doctor is merely a bonus." Crusher tried not to flinch as the entity's gaze swung round to focus on her.

"Q, what exactly are you implying by that remark?" Picard's tone was building up an edge. 

"What, afraid I'll lure away another one of your lady friends?" Those bright, amoral eyes flicked dismissively over her. "She's not my type."

She bit back a sharp retort, reluctant to anger an entity capable of flinging her onto the Borg homeworld with a thought. 

"Then Q, it seems that you've abandoned your self-appointed mission to test and guide humanity in favour of simply insulting us. Does an omnipotent entity like you really have nothing better to do? I had hoped there was at least a point to all this."

Q was suddenly on his feet, staring coldly down at Picard. "Actually, I'm here to do your little species a favour. Again.  And I want to give you a chance to clear up one of your mistakes."

Picard stepped back, folding his arms warily. "Not that I don't appreciate your consideration, Q, but what exactly would be the nature of this favour?"

"You think you've destroyed the Borg, killed their Queen, beaten them back for good. You're wrong. You can kill as many of them as you want, destroy as many of her bodies as you want, but _there will always be more. No matter how often you defeat them, you will never stop them."_

She couldn't stay silent any longer. "Then are you saying we're doomed?"

Q smiled sardonically. "All mortal beings are doomed, Bev. The question is how long you can keep beating back the darkness before it takes you." 

Picard was watching the creature minutely. "All right, Q. We understand. We won't get complacent. We'll prepare for another attack." His eyes narrowed. "But that isn't all, is it?"

"Well guessed, Jean-Luc. Do you want to know where your dream came from? I wasn't responsible, but I know who was." A needlessly significant pause, then Q dropped gracefully back into his chair. "Let me give you a little history lesson."

"Is this lecture of yours going to take long, Q? I gathered from what you said that the matter was rather urgent."

"No, it isn't, unless you insist on interrupting me again.  Contrary to what you might think, your pathetic species does not know everything, and you can't possibly take any remotely useful action with your current state of knowledge. And unlike your parlous state of understanding of the universe, your lack of basic historical knowledge can be remedied in minutes. I'm talking about the first civilisation to arise in the galaxy, the one that seeded the other planets with their DNA. They lasted for a long time - very easy for them, really, since they had no competition. They managed some quite impressive parlour tricks - corporeal immortality, harnessing the Omega particle, that sort of thing. Until finally, they found themselves some competition. And they couldn't deal with it."

The entity's smile was coldly and smugly malicious. "You destroyed them?" Crusher asked incredulously. 

"To be fair, they attacked us first. Bad mistake. A species with reality-altering technology is no match for a species which can alter reality at will. And we didn't destroy them - just stripped them of their technology and left them to claw their way back from scratch, in a galaxy in which their own descendents were in a position to provide some competition for them."

Picard spoke up again. "Much as we appreciate the cautionary tale-"

"What did I say about interrupting me, Jean-Luc? There is in fact a point to this diverting little anecdote, and I'm getting to it now. Suffice to say that they clawed their way back up rather too well. Devoted their whole existence to it, as a matter of fact.  They managed to rediscover quite a lot of their precursors' better tricks - the immortality bit, transwarp travel, artificial telepathy..."

"The Borg," said Crusher, eyes widening. "You're talking about the Borg."

"Clever girl. Now see if you can make the connection here. We didn't quite destroy all the first civilisation's toys. We left a few around to see what the new species made of them."

"And now the Borg have found them," Picard said grimly.

"Yes and no. They found one of the more interesting devices, and then lost it again. Careless of them. They're trying to find it again, by tapping into the memories of one of their little drones who got separated from them when they found it the first time."

Picard had turned slightly greyish. "Work it out for yourself, Jean-Luc, if you object so much to being _lectured_."

"I don't understand," Crusher said, glancing rapidly between her horrorstruck captain and the malevolently grinning god. "I got all the implants out. I checked. There's nothing still Borg in him."

"Borg technology has a nasty tendency to regrow itself. Don't worry, you'll be able to get it out before he turns into that boring creature Locutus again. Speaking of which, I did mention that you were going to have a chance to clear up one of your mistakes from the last time you thought you'd defeated the Borg." Q's smile grew wider and crueller. "Just hope he can bring himself to forgive you for what you did to him."

A flash of light, and Q and the chair were gone. In their place lay the armoured figure of a Borg drone, curled in an oddly human and vulnerable position, struggling to breathe, tubes and cables ripped loose from their housings, implants warped and mangled, the left side of its face split by a savage gash. Crusher recoiled in shock, as Picard slapped his combadge. "Picard to security! Intruder alert1"

The drone raised its head, its dark organic eye tearing and blinking against the light. The physician in her forced Crusher to meet its gaze. 

White lips parted in something akin to surprise, and with an awkward, rasping breath, the Borg spoke to her.

"Beverley..."

"Hugh?"


	5. Falls the Shadow

**Amaurot******

**Chapter 5: Falls the Shadow**

_"Between the idea_

_And the reality_

_Between the motion_

_And the act_

_Falls the Shadow"_

T.S. Eliot, _The Hollow Men_

**The Alpha Quadrant, 2373**

Hugh's eyelid fluttered shut, as his head dropped back to the floor. Crusher dropped to her knees beside him. Picard moved over to stand next to her, looking down at the broken body of the young Borg at their feet. 

"Hugh? Can you hear me?"

No response.

She looked up at Picard. "Jean-Luc, I think he's dying." 

Her voice was raw with pain and concern that went beyond the professional. Crusher slapped her combadge. "Crusher to sickbay! Emergency transport needed - lock onto my signal and the Borg energy signature next to me. Beam us both to sickbay." 

"Borg? Doctor, what's-"

"No time to explain! Beam us over!"

Picard reached over and touched her shoulder. "Doctor, do whatever you have to. I'll send Geordi over to help you deal with his mechanical components."

She allowed herself a tight, grateful smile. "Thanks, Jean-Luc." 

And then both doctor and patient dissolved into the blue-white light of a transporter beam. 

*******

Picard sat at the desk in his ready room, another cup of tea going cold in front of him. He ran a hand over the left side of his face and scalp, reassured to feel nothing metallic. Despite Q's assurances, the very idea that there was some Borg technology lurking inside him was beginning to make him increasingly paranoid. Some vile cybernetic carcinoma tapping into his memories, allowing them back into his head... _stop_. Although Q did seem to operate on timescales vastly different from the human, the entity did seem capable of understanding urgency in human terms. He should be reassured by Q's casual attitude, with his lack of concern with the prospect of his mortal protégé becoming… becoming _that _again. And Beverly had promised him she'd check him over and remove anything she found as soon as she'd stabilised Hugh

Hugh. Yes.  The other problem. He knew what he ought to do. Any contact with the Borg, and he should inform Starfleet at once. He knew perfectly well what they'd tell him to do - infect Hugh with the paradox virus, and send him back to the Collective to kill them all. And on one level, he could see why - sacrifice this one young man to save the Federation. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. Seen like that, it was all so simple. 

He looked up at the sound of the chime. Too soon for Beverly or Geordi to be there with results. Will, perhaps, wanting to know what was happening... or Deanna, even. Probably not Will, not yet - he'd be waiting for his captain to reach a decision. Deanna, then.

"Come," he called. The door slid open, and Deanna Troi walked into the ready room, taking the seat on the other side of the desk. He met her luminous eyes, allowing the familiar command mask of calm to come between him and her questions.

"Counselor. I must say, I was expecting you."

A studiedly calm shrug. "I sensed a lot of powerful emotions from you when you came onto the bridge. I'm not really surprised - the presence of a Borg on the ship could be expected to bring out some strong feelings, especially considering what happened earlier this year, and especially _this particular Borg."_

"I seem to remember you confronting me in a very similar way the first time we brought him on board." 

"And for the same reasons. This time we have Q complicating matters. I'm not surprised you're disturbed."

Picard returned her gaze with a carefully bland expression. "What Q told me was very... surprising. I must admit, I wasn't expecting him to behave as he did."

Troi leant forward, clearly scenting a rare emotional disclosure. "How so?"

He leant back, avoiding eye contact. "He seemed at first to have returned to his old games.  Oh, there were no theatrics, no elaborate costumed masquerades, but he took an opportunity to bait me and Beverley entirely gratuitously. To be fair, I was being somewhat abrasive myself, but he seemed almost..."

"As if he was being abrasive for the same reasons you were? Because he was worried?"

"Possibly."

Troi nodded slowly. "And if something worries Q..."

"I can't discount the possibility that he's I'm entirely misinterpreting his behaviour. He is, after all, not humanoid, despite the shape he assumes. But, nevertheless..."

"You can't discount the possibility that you're right, and he is worried."

"No, I can't. And that raises the question..."

"What do you tell Starfleet?"

There were disadvantages to having an empath as counselor. Sometimes the need to keep things hidden for the good of the crew outweighed the usefulness of her insights. He ran a hand over the left side of his face again.

"Yes. From what Q has said and implied, we could be facing a bigger threat than the Borg alone could pose. We might well have the tool to defeat such a Borg invasion. But..."

"It would go against your conscience to use him like that. Especially now he's so helpless and dependent on you for survival."

Troi looked away for a second, as if gathering her thoughts. "Beverly cares very strongly for him, you know." 

"For Hugh?" He'd suspected it from the moment they'd seen the young Borg struggling for breath on the floor of his quarters.

"Yes. He's not that much younger than Wesley, you know."

Picard nodded slowly. It made sense for the almost-bereaved mother to feel a need to protect the almost-orphaned cyborg youth. Another complicating factor.

"And Geordi thinks of him as a friend, as well." 

Of course, that was why it wasn't so simple. This wasn't just a question of sacrificing one man to save the Federation. This was a question of sacrificing Geordi's protege, Beverly's wounded foster son, simply to buy themselves some time before the next inevitable incursion. He began to run a hand over the left side of his face, only to freeze halfway through the gesture when he noticed a flicker of curiosity in Deanna's eyes.

"Captain, did Q tell you anything else? Besides warning you about the Borg and the Precursors' machine?"

 Once, he wouldn't have told her. But now, after a sudden upwelling of repressed emotions had nearly cost the Federation its future...

"Yes. Yes, he did. He told me..." He leant back in his chair, staring out of the window at the stars streaking past. 

"I had a dream last night. It seemed like a normal anxiety dream, but somehow I knew it was about the Borg."

He risked a sidelong glance at Troi, who nodded encouragingly.

"Q said... that the Borg were attempting to reactivate their link to one of their disconnected drones. On reflection, it seems to me that I must have been somehow picking up a weakened version of their signal."

He leant forward, made eye contact with Deanna again. "I heard their voices when they attacked Earth. I am one of their disconnected drones, no less than Hugh is. It seems I will always be. The implants... the Borg technology... it's growing back." 

Troi's dark eyes widened with horrified realisation, although the rest of her face kept its mask of professional calm. 

"It shouldn't pose a problem. Dr Crusher removed the implants once, and she can do so again. Q said I had plenty of time." He wasn't sure whether he was trying to convince her or himself. 

"Are you sure it doesn't pose a problem?"

Her voice was calm, but the implication was clear. If he told Starfleet Command, they'd think the same thing. Unstable element. They'd be justified in thinking that now. Admiral Satie had been right, in her twisted, paranoid way. He'd always be Borg. He couldn't help but wonder if that was why he was trying so hard to protect Hugh.

"Captain, how do you feel about this?"

He realised he'd fallen into another too-long pause, and Troi was still digging for a response. 

"Counselor, I-"

He was cut short as a sudden, savage pain blossomed in his chest, just below his ribs, forcing an agonised gasp from him. His vision was blurring, narrowing to a darkened tunnel, somehow greenish like the sky before a hurricane. He became aware, for a few hideously prolonged seconds, of a chorus of voices whispering in the back of his head, and then he blacked out completely.

*******

She was pinned to the trunk of a vast tree, a spear through her side, just below her ribs. She knew she'd been hanging there for a long time, days maybe. The last of her blood had drained away long ago. It didn't hurt, although she was aware of the cold metal of the spearhead inside her ribcage. 

The tree's shadowy branches spread above her, the rustling of the leaves strangely soothing. She'd been here before, she thought. Only then, the sunlight had poured through the canopy, bathing her in golden-green radiance, and she hadn't had this spear in her. 

There was still no sunlight, but the air was getting warmer, and there were voices in the leaves now.

A sudden dizzying shift in perspective, and she was not hanging, but lying supine, still with the spear impaling her to whatever she lay on. A figure stood over her, and the dim light glinted off a narrow, needle-like blade as it reached for her left eye. She didn't resist, but calmly prepared to let it  take her eye from its socket. 

Another shift in perspective. She was still lying on her back, but on cold grey sand now, and the spear was gone. There was still a figure beside her, kneeling over her, with his hand in the wound in her side.  

"What happened to you?" he asked her softly, a faint mechanical overlay to his voice. 

"I was searching for wisdom." 

He drew his hand free of the wound, the dead-white skin of his fingers reddened with blood. She frowned in bewilderment: she'd been certain that hanging from the tree had left her utterly bloodless, her skin as impossibly pale as his. 

"Why? What did you need to know so badly?"

"I have no memories. There's music, and I'm lying on the grass in the college quadrangle. And before then, nothing. I need my past back."

He leant over her then, and for a moment she could think of nothing but the delicacy and perfection of the bones of his face. 

"They won't give it to you without asking a price."

She was still staring in awed astonishment. His right eye was dark, human, full of intelligence, compassion, pain. His left... the one she was going to give up for wisdom... Intricate machinery. Golden and green. The sunlight through the tree.

"I'm changing. But I don't know what I'm changing into."

He reached out, touched her face with a cold white hand, leaving smudges of her own blood on her cheek. 

"Me," he said, quietly and sadly. "You're becoming like me, but from the other side."

She tried to bring her hand up to cover his, but the grey sand covered her whole body now. She was sinking, she realised, drowning in the cold ground. 

He brought his other hand up to her face, dark metal fingers curving under her jaw. Trying to keep her above the sand.

"Who are you?" he asked, soft but urgent. "Where are you?"

"I'm... not sure. I told you I'm changing."

"Where are you? I need to find you. Before they give you back your past."

"I'm a JRF – a junior Research Fellow – I'm from Jordan College. Oxford. I'm in Oxford."

And now her face slipped through his hands, and the sand closed over her head. An impossibly long moment of darkness, and she opened her eyes to find herself back in her body, lying on her side on the  black and white kitchen floor, Cassandra kneeling beside her and chewing nervously at her knuckles. 

*******

"Captain? _Captain_?"

He looked up into Troi's worried face. "What happened?" he rasped, feeling as if his throat was full of sand. "How long was I out?"

"Two, maybe three seconds. I should get you to sickbay."

The pain in his ribs had gone now, but he still felt weak and slightly shaken, as if he'd just had the fright of his life but was unable to remember exactly what had terrified him so. 

He got to his feet, forcing his limbs to stop shaking, and straightened  his uniform shirt. "I really don't think there's any immediate need, Counselor."

"Captain, what if you were picking up Borg frequencies again? What if they're getting stronger? At least let Beverly check you over."

"If you insist, Counselor."

He tapped his commuicator. "Picard to Crusher."

"I'm glad you called, Jean-Luc." Crusher sounded exhausted. "We saved him. He's conscious now, and asking to speak to you." He thought he heard a touch of betrayal in the last phrase. 

"Doctor, I've been experiencing... symptoms. Are you in any state to perform a full bioscan?"

"You're coming in for a checkup voluntarily? The last time that happened you'd been replaced by an alien double." There was a hint of weary amusement in her voice. 

"Deanna talked me into it," he admitted. 

"Good for her. I think that means I owe her dessert in Eleven-Forward tonight."

"Doctor, I'll be down shortly." 

The last traces of the weak, shocked feeling faded on his way down to sickbay, letting in the other anxieties. He couldn't put off telling Starfleet indefinitely. And when he did, there was no way he could keep protecting Hugh.

The atmosphere in sickbay was quiet and oddly tense, Crusher's staff communicating with shared nervous looks more than actual speech. He supposed that was the effect that having spent the last few hours working to save the life of a Borg would have on them. 

He found Crusher in her office, along with La Forge and Hugh. The young Borg was leaning over the doctor's LCARS terminal, images scrolling past too fast to be seen by any human eye, oblivious to everything around him. 

La Forge caught the captain's eye. "Amazing, isn't it?" he said quietly. "The only other person I've seen read that quickly is Data." 

Crusher moved up to Picard's other side. "He regained consciousness less than five minutes ago. As soon as he realised he was on the _Enterprise, he asked to speak to you. He seems... worried."_

She glanced back at the cyborg. "Well, more like terrified," she amended.

Hugh swung round then, so abruptly it surprised them all. "Captain Picard. I've found her."

"Found who?"

"Nine of Twelve. The one they're searching for." 

**Author's Notes:** Jordan College is borrowed from Phillip Pullman's version of Oxford. 


	6. Worlds' Ends

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 6: Worlds' Ends**

"_There are other places_

_Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,_

_Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city - _

_But this is the nearest, in place and time,_

_Now and in __England_."

T. S. Eliot, _Four Quartets: Little Gidding_

**The Alpha Quadrant, 2373**

"Nine of Twelve?" Crusher repeated blankly. 

Hugh turned to look at her. She was astonished by how expressive his face was now, the depths of suffering and nobility in his dark human eye. The innocent child-machine she'd rescued years before had grown up, acquired decades' worth of pain and wisdom. "Nine of Twelve. Quaternary adjunct of Trimatrix 753. The Collective lost her to the Machine six years ago." 

Crusher turned to catch Picard's eye. "The lost drone Q mentioned."

Picard nodded, forbearing to comment. 

Hugh stepped forward, looking Picard in the eye. "Captain, you have to get to her before they finish reconnecting her. The memories they need seem to be blocked somehow. They don't know where the Machine is yet, but unless you find her before they manage to access her memory, they'll find it."

"Wait, Hugh," La Forge said, moving over to his friend's side. "How did you find her?"

"While I was regenerating, after you and Beverly saved my life, " a curious twinge of bitterness there, "I sensed the spatiotemporal pulse they sent out to reach her. It seems to be designed to reactivate the neurotransponder in disconnected drones. She replied to the pulse, probably subconsciously. I was able to contact her, now both our neurotransponders are partially active."

Hugh indicated the LCARS screen. "She's on Earth. Jordan College, Oxford."

Picard moved over to study the screen. It was displaying an image of a lanky but graceful woman, dressed in archaic, weathered black and leaning against a lichen-speckled wall. A dishevelled mane of thick black hair framed a narrow, melancholy face. Large, brilliant green eyes added to the impression of an exotic, long-limbed feline. He allowed himself a small, puzzled frown. Firstly, the woman on the screen seemed entirely and unremarkably human, if somewhat pale. Secondly, to judge by her clothes, she must have died a good two centuries ago.

"Hugh," he said quietly. "Are you sure?"

The young Borg pressed his lips together, watching Picard as if trying to muster the right words. "It's her. Nine of Twelve. Anastasia Glass."

Absolute certainty. And another problem.

*******

**Jericho****, **Oxford******, 2002 **

Anastasia Glass sat up slowly, looking into her friend's wide, shocked blue eyes. It took a couple of attempts before she managed to speak. 

"Cass? How long was I out?"

"Nearly an hour. Look, I didn't call an ambulance. I'm sorry. I didn't know if it was the right thing to do, what with, well, _that_."

Cassandra gestured towards Anastasia's right hand. The older woman blinked at her for a moment, then took in the pool of dark blood on the kitchen floor, the sleeve of her sweater now soaked and stiff with blood, and...

She brought her right arm up to her face, staring in dreamlike shock at the machinery jutting from her forearm, just below her wrist. An access port of some kind, maybe a power or data coupling, made of dully lustrous dark metal. 

Cassandra sat back on her heels and wrapped her arms round herself. "I, I... when you fell over, I picked you up and I tried, tried to put you in the recovery position, cos I thought you might be going to choke on your own vomit or something. And while I was moving you, I, I... there was this metal thing sticking our of your arm, and the skin round it was all split and bleeding, it looked like it had come through the skin from the inside, and it wasn't there before, I'm sure I would've spotted it when you were wearing T-shirts last summer, and, and there's other bits of metal coming out of your hands and neck, and it sort of looks like you're turning into a sort of cyborg. And I don't know what to do about that."

Cassandra gave her a pleading, bewildered look. "It's just too weird. I mean, where's it coming from? Who's _doing_ this to you?"

Anastasia got to her feet. In a way, it was a relief to find her secret exposed like this. At least it meant she had someone to talk to. "C'mon, we've got to get this blood cleaned up before Shazia gets back."

Cassandra stared at her blankly. "You're thinking about housekeeping at a time like this?"

"No, thinking about not freaking out Shazia unnecessarily."

"Well, her housemate's spontaneously turning into a cyborg. I think freaking out a bit would be kind of necessary there."

"She doesn't have to know. Not yet. I need to know what's going on myself first."

Cassandra was still sitting on the floor, beginning to hyperventilate. "But, I mean, what's going to happen to you? I mean, the government's gonna want to put you in a lab and prod you, and, and, will the college still let you keep your postdoc place if you're not, not..."

"Not human any more?"

"Well, yeah." Cassandra stared up at her for a second. "I think I'm just gonna quietly go into shock down here. Don't mind me."

"No, you're not." Anastasia grabbed a handful of paper towels from the stack next to the sink and waved them at Cassandra. "You're going to help me clear up the mess. And then it's time for Plan B."

Cassandra took the paper towels, but stayed where she was, still staring in blank shock. "Is Plan B gonna be enough for a situation like this?"

"I've never yet been in a situation where Plan B didn't help. C'mon. Get going while I find the mop."

To her relief, Cassandra moved, beginning to methodically mop up the dark puddle of blood. Anastasia looked back, checking once more, before heading out into the hall to find the broom cupboard. No wonder the poor girl was in shock. She'd had to sit beside the unconscious, mutated form of her best friend for an hour, checking for signs of life. It would have been better, perhaps, for her mental stability if she hadn't found out about _this , but now they were in it together, bound together by shared strangeness and secrets. She took the mop from the broom cupboard, musing slightly on the incongruity of her greyish-pale, semi-mechanised hand on the worn and splintery wood, feeling a flicker of guilt for  being so glad that Cassandra had been plunged into this as well. _

A horrible, familiar sound sent her running back to the kitchen, mop clutched in one hand. Cassandra was bent over the sink, still retching, and a mass of bloody paper lay on the floor. Anastasia dropped the mop and crossed the room to stand beside her friend, resting a comforting hand on her back. 

The younger woman sucked in a few deep breaths, and turned a pale face to look at her. 

"Sorry about that. It was just..."

"Shock?"

"No. It was when I was mopping up the blood. The blood was fine, the blood wasn't a problem. It was the... _bits_..."

Cassandra's sharp young face was pulled into a grimace of horrified revulsion. She took a few more deep breaths. "There were bits of skin. And... _tissue_. Stuff I'm pretty sure should be on the inside. It wouldn't have been so bad if, if... if I hadn't known they were bits of _you_. I think... if you were still just human, you'd be dead by now. There's too much stuff that should be on the inside that isn't."

Anastasia's first impulse was to pull her friend into a comforting hug, but the thought of her bloody, not quite human arms stopped her. "Look, sit down. No. Make some more tea. I never got any. I'll see to this." 

Cassandra managed a shaky smile. "Yeah. Tea is always a good thing."

*******

**The Alpha Quadrant, 2373**

It had been a long time since the atmosphere in the conference room had been this strained. If the prospect of another Borg incursion wasn't enough, there was the knowledge that they were all tacitly disobeying Starfleet orders hanging over them. Crusher was defiant, as usual, holding fast to the voice of her own conscience: Riker was uneasy, Troi attempting to maintain some kind of professional calm and detachment, Data had deactivated his emotion chip and was simply intellectually curious. To be fair to them, they were all coping remarkably well with the presence of a Borg in the room: although to Crusher and La Forge he was more than just the face of the enemy, to the others he was simply a representative of the species that had caused the Federation so much suffering so recently. 

Hugh had refused a seat at the table,  reminding Picard that any position other than standing was uncomfortable and unnatural for a Borg. Instead, the cyborg was standing quietly by the captain's left shoulder, gaze cast down at the polished table, optical implant flashing copper-red. 

"So," Picard concluded, "This is the situation we find ourselves in. According to Q, we face a new and significantly more dangerous Borg threat. It appears that our one chance to avert this threat lies with a woman who was last heard of on Earth in the year 2002."

"Then there's nothing we can do," said Riker heavily. "We can't just hop back into the past like that."

Hugh looked up, his eyepiece flashing amber. "I've spoken to Geordi. You have enough readings from the chroniton field used by the Borg for me to reconstruct such a field. It wouldn't be large enough for the _Enterprise_, but it would allow a small craft to make the jump through transwarp space and then through time in order to get back to her."

"Even if it's practically possible, there's still the Temporal Prime Directive to consider," protested Riker.

"Do you think the Collective will care about your Temporal Prime Directive?" Hugh snapped with a sudden edge of anger. 

"Hugh has a point," Data said thoughtfully. "Anastasia Glass vanished in May 2002, leaving her work on her postdoctoral research project incomplete, along with one of her students from Jordan College. It is possible that they were taken from their time by the Borg Collective. We would not be altering history significantly if we removed them before the Borg got there."

"You have no choice," Hugh said, voiced laced with desperation. "You have to stop them getting to her. They've already made contact. They'll access her memories soon." 

Riker paused, then launched back into his role as devil's advocate. "How sure are we that she's the one? And how sure are we that we can trust Q?"

A flash of light, and Q was sprawled elegantly across the polished table. 

"Speak of the devil," muttered Riker. Q responded with a knowing smirk.

"Really, the ingratitude of your species is quite astonishing. I try to do you a favour by warning you of the greatest threat yet to your pitiful Federation's very existence, and you sit around bickering over legalities. You're unbelievably lucky that your little pawn here," a casual gesture in Hugh's direction, "found it within himself to forgive you for using him. You should be on your knees thanking him for deigning to help you after you treated him like you did."

"I don't blame them," Hugh said quietly. "Not any more. Returning to the Collective was my decision. What happened after that was my responsibility as much as theirs."

"Oh, still crippled with that survivor's guilt of yours? How... human." Q's face twisted in disdain. 

Hugh met the entity's eyes calmly. "I can't let the Federation fall to the same fate as my people. Not when I'm in a position to prevent it. I'm responsible for enough dead and assimilated friends."

"How very altruistic. More human than human, aren't you?"

"Leave him alone, Q. He deserves better treatment than this." Picard rose to his feet and stood protectively by the young Borg's side.

"Jealous, mon capitane? I must admit, your little creation is learning much more quickly than you did. He's over the pompous self-righteousness and egotistical arrogance already, and it took you… must have been a good six years."

"Q, what's your point? And do you absolutely have to insult us to convey it?"

"It's very simple, Jean-Luc. Time is running out, and having obeyed Starfleet to the letter is going to be cold comfort when you're strapped to an assimilation table."

Another flash, and Q was gone.

Picard stared levelly round his crew. "I believe we've just been instructed to disobey not only Starfleet orders, but to violate the Temporal Prime Directive."

"I'd have to agree," Riker said neutrally.

Picard took a deep breath. "Any of you who have objections to such a course of action, make them known now and I'll put them on record."

Silence. A calm, united silence.

La Forge sighed. "Like Hugh said, I don't think we have much choice." 


	7. A Friend in Need

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 7: A Friend In Need**

_"A friend in need's a friend indeed,_

_A friend who bleeds is better._

_My friend confessed, she passed the test,_

_And we will never sever."_

Placebo, "Pure Morning"__

**The Alpha Quadrant, 2373**

They had been working on the shuttlecraft for several hours now, preparing the small vessel to Hugh's specifications. The Engineering staff still shied away from the Borg, responding with barely-disguised  mistrust every time he came up beside them to direct their work, flinching in horror at the soft hum and whir of machinery that accompanied his every breath and gesture.

Geordi tried to restrain his anger. After all, they were doing their best to get over their fear, and he did understand why they felt it. Engineering had taken heavy casualties in the incursion earlier this year; many of them had lost colleagues to creatures which looked exactly like the one working beside them.  They couldn't look at Hugh and see the slight, vulnerable young man inside the exoskeleton, the depth of feeling in his human eye. 

The kid had been through a lot over the past few years, from the terse account he'd given, and getting this kind of hostility from people he was trying to help couldn't be doing him any good. He stepped forward, over to where Hugh was studying the shuttle's shield generator.

"Hey, Hugh," he said, noticing how quickly the cyborg turned to face him, how unlike the usual Borg deliberation. "Want to take a break from all this, just for a few minutes?"

"I can keep functioning for another forty-five point six three seven hours before I need to regenerate. We need to be ready to put the plan into action as soon as possible. We're running out of time." 

Hugh allowed himself a small smile. "But I do appreciate your concern, Geordi."

"I wasn't worried that you might be getting tired, Hugh. I was worried... well, you know," he lowered his voice slightly, "The crew are being kinda..." He trailed off, searching for words.

"They mistrust me," Hugh said simply, apparently calmly. "Because I am Borg."

Geordi sighed with frustration. "I explained. I told them you weren't like other Borg. They just... Hugh, we lost a lot of good people when the Borg attacked us. They're having trouble getting over that."

Hugh stood there, just looking at Geordi for a long moment, a flicker of pain and bitterness showing in his dark human eye. His jaw tightened subtly, stance growing ever so slightly more rigid. "I understand." 

Geordi moved another step closer. He'd remembered Hugh as a gentle, naive kid, not unlike Data in his well-meaning innocence. The Hugh who stood before him now was... hardened. Scarred. There were layers of pride and wariness over that kid's vulnerabilites. It wasn't right for the engineering crew, his own people, to be adding to that.

"Look, Hugh, I just... I don't want you to think all humans are going to hate you. I just want you to know that I'm still your friend."

Hugh glanced away for a second, holographic eye shimmering through amber to red. "I had friends among the individualised Borg. Talvor. Kelsus." His tone was flat and calm, very matter-of-fact. "Talvor is dead. Kelsus might as well be."

"Yeah, you've lost people to the Collective as well. I can see why it's making you angry when they treat you like you're one of them."

"I'm not angry." Hugh raised his organic hand, gestured in a touchingly helpless way. "I was dying when you found me. You and Beverly saved my life. Again. Why did you do that?"

"I... uh... Beverly's a doctor. Saving people is what she does. And you're my friend." If he hadn't known better, he'd have thought Hugh was saying he'd wanted to die. 

"I'm dangerous to you. The Collective will come for me, maybe not immediately but as soon as they can spare the resources. They'll assimilate or kill you all, to get to me." Hugh took a deep, shuddering breath. "There were five thousand Borg on my Cube. Only I'm left. If, that first time, you hadn't saved me..."

Geordi felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. "Wait, Hugh - are you saying you want to _die_?"

"No. Not now. I'm alive. I have a chance to save your life now, and Beverly's. I'm an individual now, but I can't exist alone. I can't stand the loneliness. I need friends." Again he looked away, his voice sounding oddly choked. "I need to know I can bring my friends more than pain and destruction."

With a sudden wave of shocked compassion, Geordi realised his Borg protege was crying, his armoured shoulders wracked with small, barely controlled spasms. Impulsively, he did what he'd done the times Data had lost control of his newly-installed emotion chip: he stepped up to Hugh's side and put a supportive arm around his shoulders.

"I'm not... not malfunctioning, Geordi. This... this happens to me when I feel... feel strong emotion."

"Yeah, I know. Humans do the same thing."

"Then what... what are you trying to do?" Hugh glanced sideways at Geordi, a flash of the old innocent bewilderment coming through. 

"I'm being sympathetic, Hugh. Humans find physical contact with someone who cares about them helps when they're unhappy."

Hugh pressed his lips together, a shy, thoughtful smile showing through his tears. "It's... it's helping. Thank you."

"No problem. What are friends for?"

"Making a singular mind... feel better. You told... told me that."

"It was a rhetorical question, Hugh. I didn't expect an answer." Yeah, just like looking after Data in one of his early mood swings. 

Hugh drew a deep breath. "I think I can get back to work now. You can move your arm. Thank you... for not hating me."

Geordi pulled his arm away from Hugh's shoulders. "Are you gonna be okay?"

"I have to be. We don't have much time. We need to find Anastasia before the Collective does."

"I thought you said she was called Nine of Twelve."

"She was Nine of Twelve. I was Third of Five. Now I am Hugh, and she is Anastasia."

*******

**Jericho****, **Oxford******, 2002**

Cassandra wheeled her bike into the hallway, shoving Anastasia's house keys into her pocket. The supply trip to the town centre shops had at least stopped her from having to think about the sheer weirdness of what was happening to her friend for a bit, but now she was back. She just hoped Anastasia had got rid of the last of the blood whilst she'd been out.

She locked the door behind her, and propped the bike up against the radiator. The lack of a stand made this more difficult than it really needed to be, and she ended up chaining it to the hot-water pipe. 

"It's not going to get nicked in here, y'know."

Anastasia was standing behind her. The clanks and thuds of trying to get the bloody machine to stay where it was put must've drawn her attention. _Okay. Try not to think of bloody machines. Try and think about normal things. Like..._

"Where'd you get the vodka?"

Anastasia gestured negligently with the glass. "It's Shazia's, not mine. But I thought I needed it more than she did."

"You started without me?"

"It's not done any good, Cass. I'm still not drunk. Not even slightly." A pensive, downcast stare.

"Well, that'd be your cyborg metabolism kicking in." _There. Said it. The c word. And didn't freak out._

A slight wince. "Do you have to be so B-movie about the whole thing? Makes me feel like I should be being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger."

She couldn't help but grin slightly. "Nah... Liv Tyler, s'gotta be."

An answering half-smile. "Well, that makes me feel a lot better about turning into a cybernetic freak."

"Now who's being B-movie, eh?"

"All right. Did you get the stuff?"

"Yeah, " she tapped her overfull rucksack. "I bought up all the bandages and plasters and stuff the Co-op had in. And I got the chocolate as well." _Good sign, her asking for that. If she still wants dark Swiss chocolate, she's still Anastasia._

"Good. Better go up to my room, just in case Shazia gets back early."

"Er... are you gonna need me to help with bandages and stuff? And blood and stuff?"

"Maybe. Are you going to be able to cope?"

"Hope so. Think I got the whole freaking out and vomiting bit out of my system. Are you... I mean, you've been really calm up until now, but are you gonna..."

"Really, it's not freaking me out at all now. I'm getting used to it."

Cassandra cautiously followed her friend up the stairs. "I don't get it. Has all the tech been there all along, just... underneath? So it's coming through like, like... wisdom teeth? Or is it sort of materialising? But then how's it materialising and where from?"

"Bit of both, I think. It feels like it's... unfolding. Like it is part of me, and has always been part of me, but it's just... being activated. On the other hand, there's too much metal here for it to have just been under the surface. My wrist's too bony for that coupling to have just lurked in it all these years. I think... some of it's always been in me, and it's... sort of materialising the other bits as it decides I need them? Does that make sense?"

"But if there's always been bits of tech in you, how come nobody's found them? I mean, doctors and that?"

Anastasia swung round slightly, one dark, arched eyebrow raised. "I've never been to a doctor."

"How'd you manage that?"

"I've never been ill. Not even a cold. Never had an injury that didn't heal up within a day or two, either." Calculated nonchalance. 

Cassandra took a deep breath. "Now that's freaky. Cool, and useful, but freaky. You never got suspicious about that?"

"I didn't realise it was at all abnormal until recently. Even then, I just put it down to freakishly good luck. Really, you'd have to be very paranoid to put nothing going wrong down as sinister."

"Well, _I_ would. Think it was sinister, I mean."

"Exactly." 

"Yeah, well, when your best mate's going all Cronenberg on you, it's not paranoid, it's common sense. I mean, _nobody's got that kind of tech. So that means you're from the future, or a dodgy government experiment with captured alien technology, or..."_

"I'm not unique, I know that much. There's the man in my dream..."

Cassandra stared at her blankly for a moment. "What's James Marsters got to do with anything?"

"Wrong dream. I'm talking about the dream I had when I passed out. There was this man... this cyborg... this absolutely beautiful cyborg..." A faint, wistful smile.

"Oh, one of _those_ dreams. Is this really the time to go into that sort of goings-on?"

Anastasia sighed in exasperation. "Are you really being slow on the uptake, or just trying to be funny?"

"I'm being understandably a bit confused about _my best mate turning into a cyborg_ and latching onto whatever concepts seem understandable as they go past. I'm sorry if I'm not as fast as you'd like, but I am _way _out of my depth here!"

"Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped. It's tougher for you than it is for me. I feel like, on some level, not consciously, I do know what's going on. You haven't got that."

"Okay. I shouldn't have snapped either. But please could you explain all this _slowly to a poor little human who hasn't got your intuitive understanding of cyborg stuff?"_

"I am trying, honestly. It's just difficult putting it into words. The cyborg in my dream told me I was becoming like him. That means there are others out there."

"Oh great. There's a bloke in your dream telling you how you're evolving into something posthuman. It'll be orbital lasers and destroying Tokyo next. I've seen films. 'Cept could you see your way to destroying, oh I don't know, Hull, or Milton Keynes or somewhere instead?"

"He really didn't seem like the city-destroying type. More... sweet, and sad, and kind of noble..."

"It's always the quiet ones."

They'd reached the landing by now. Anastasia turned round and put a hand on Cassandra's shoulder. "Look - _thanks_."

"What for?"

"Well, for not running screaming off into the night, or coming after me with flaming torches, or anything."

"Well, did Sam Gamgee run off screaming when Frodo started obsessing about the Ring? Did Alfred quit his job when Bruce Wayne decided to dress up like a giant bat? Did Xander come after Buffy with torches when he found out about the Slayer bit? I'm your friend. Sidekick, if you like - I don't angst enough to be a main character. And you don't just run off when your friend needs you, even if they are going a little freaky."

Anastasia leant back against the wall, letting a combination of shadows and wild black hair half-hide an incredulous smile. "I don't deserve you."

"Course you do. I wouldn't be here if you didn't. Just... could you humour me a bit? Put up with the bad jokes, and the not getting it, and the freaking out occasionally?"

"I thought you'd been coping very well, considering."

"I've been trying. Just remember to do the considering, okay?"

Anastasia pushed herself gracefully away from the wall. "You cope. I'll consider."

*******

**The Alpha Quadrant, 2373**

Picard walked over towards the newly-prepared shuttle, feeling painfully self-conscious in his newly-replicated twenty-first century suit. It was similar enough to the ones he'd worn as Dixon Hill, and to the guise he'd adopted when searching for Cochrane, but this was going to have to pass scrutiny from real human beings in a mass-media-saturated society. Any slight imperfections in his disguise couldn't simply be put down to being 'from out of town'. The cover for this mission had to be perfect - the cynical citizens of twenty-first century Britain wouldn't fall for any 'Chinese rice picker' stories. 

La Forge and Hugh were waiting beside the shuttle's doors. There was no way either of them could pass as twenty-first century humans, but their presence on board the shuttle was needed to maintain the modifications and scan for Borg activity. If the shuttle's cloaking device (installed by Hugh, with his knowledge of assimilated Romulan and Klingon technology) failed, then Earth of the twenty-first century might well leap to the wrong conclusions about this new satellite, sparking the Third World War off prematurely. What happened if the Borg Collective arrived at such a vulnerable Earth with the same plan as Hugh didn't bear thinking about.

"Well gentlemen," he addressed them. "Are we ready?"

Hugh looked up at him, eyepiece flashing bronze-green. "The modifications are online. I've programmed in a course that will take the shuttle via transwarp to Sector 001, then will return it to normal space in the cover of the Kuiper belt, then create a temporal vortex leading back to Anastasia's last recorded sighting. We can approach Earth itself on impluse drive, protected by the cloak."

The young Borg  glanced away from Picard for a second. "I asked Geordi to download all surviving records of Anastasia into the shuttle's computer."

"You'd be surprised how much made it, " La Forge said. "Oxford University's records made it nearly intact through the Post-Atomic Horror. I found some stuff from Manchester as well - more gaps, but plenty still survived."

"Manchester was the capital of the Provisional Government, after London was bombed in the Third World War. That would explain why its archives survived. Britain was never quite as damaged or as barbaric as North America became."

Hugh was watching them quizzically. "I've studied the records. There are still things I don't understand. Human things."

It had become so easy to think of Hugh as simply a human with cybernetic implants, that it was oddly jarring to be reminded that he was, after all, an individualised Borg. Not human, and never fully would be, even if he did give up the implants at some point in the future.

The last two members of the away team entered the shuttle bay: Dr Crusher, looking uncomfortable in a rather severe skirt suit, and Counselor Troi, looking rather more relaxed in what were presumably casual clothes.  Troi's purpose on this mission was to ensure that the away team blended in with the locals, despite a few goodnatured digs from Riker about the last time she 'blended'. Crusher's mission was to deal with Dr Glass, and to check her over for residual Borg technology. The pair were, judging from their conspiratorial tone and hand gestures, discussing the vagaries of twenty-first century undergarments. 

That left Riker and Data to run the ship and deal with Starfleet Command. He had faith in Will's ability to cope with Starfleet, and at least he didn't have that damnable 'unstable element' albatross hanging round his neck. Data would make a more than capable second in command - after all, the android had proved himself capable of running the whole ship singlehandedly. 

Crusher reached the shuttle and smiled at Hugh, who allowed a cautious half-smile in return. She turned to Picard. "Well. Ready as we'll ever be."

Ready to use Borg technology to violate Starfleet orders and the timestream itself. Ready to risk everything on the word of one individualised Borg. "Then let's go."

**Author's Notes:** Cassandra's exegesis on the Art of the Sidekick is mostly obvious – she refers to _Lord of the Rings_, _Batman_ and _Buffy__ the Vampire Slayer. The film she mentions darkly in conjunction with "orbital lasers and destroying Tokyo" is __Akira._


	8. Intersections

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 8: Intersections**

"_Here, the intersection of the timeless moment_

_Is __England__ and nowhere.__ Never and always."_

T.S. Eliot_, Four Quartets: Little Gidding_

**Transwarp**** Space, 2373**

Crusher stared at the boiling multicoloured enrgies of transwarp on the shuttle's viewscreen, but couldn't help but throw quick, nervous glances back at Hugh. Whilst modifying the shuttle, he'd installed energy and data conduits, and now he was standing there motionless, organic eye closed, face absolutely expressionless, posture perfectly straight. Absorbing energy, whilst simultaneously controlling the ship's Borg-modified systems. Like the thousands of motionless drones on a Borg cube. It gave her the creeps. 

She'd come to think of him as just some lost, lonely youth, far from home and bereft of family or friends. Like Wes, wherever he was. When he'd been lying there in sickbay, looking so very young - he hardly seemed to have aged at all since they'd first rescued him - and so very vulnerable, she'd been so tempted to pull those implants off him, save that fragile biological creature from that hideous armour, the tubes and cables that so cruelly pierced his skin. Now, looking at him like this, it was very clear to her how absolutely and horribly wrong that would have been. Taking the machinery out of him would not have freed him, but crippled him. He was Borg. Individual, but still Borg. Not human, and emphatically not her son. 

Surely, he'd been someone's son once. Someone who was long ago assimilated, someone who was no longer capable of recognising or caring for her own child. He probably didn't even remember her, had probably never even had a childhood. It made her shudder to think that if things had gone ever so slightly differently, if Q hadn't saved them the first time, if Jean-Luc hadn't been rescued, then Wesley would have been transformed into something like Hugh, and she would have been in the position of Hugh's long-forgotten, long-assimilated mother. 

She jumped slightly as a sharp click came from behind her, and then the soft whir and hiss of bionics as Hugh swung round and moved forwards. 

"The transwarp jump has been made successfully. We should reach the Kuiper belt in forty-seven point six three minutes," Hugh stated simply, tone as uninflected as the computer's, moving past La Forge and Picard. "The course has been set. There's nothing that needs to be done until then."

Picard swung round in his chair. "So, Counselor, Doctor, what conclusions have you reached about the mission?"

Troi and Crusher looked at each other for a second, and then Troi set her shoulders and spoke first. "Dr Glass is a junior research fellow of Jordan College. She completed her PhD thesis in 2001, working on, er..." she glanced down at her PADD.

"Chaotic attractors and the onset of turbulent flow," Hugh said quietly. "Her work on it was very sophisticated for the primitive state of mathematical knowledge at the time. I found it very interesting."

Troi swung round and stared. "You read her thesis?"

"Geordi found it in Oxford University's archives," Hugh said mildly. "I found her work on chaotic systems intriguing. The Borg Collective had little time for studies of uncertainty, preferring to remove sources of unpredictability rather than study them."

La Forge looked up. "Hugh - have you read _everything_ I found?"

"I've downloaded the data into my secondary memory core. It didn't take me long to review it, but there are still things I don't understand. Counselor Troi may be able to explain them for me."

Troi froze under his steady, innocently but intently curious stare. Crusher felt a sudden twinge of sympathy for her friend: Hugh's stare reminded her of Data in his early days, or Wes as a very small child. It nailed you to the wall with a gentle but unrelenting demand for answers. 

Troi rallied. "Well, the records don't include her home address, and she seems not to have lived in the college for some years now. We could ask at the college, but I doubt they'd reveal the information. I would recommend we try to find her in the maths department in the morning."

Hugh's expression shifted from curiosity to anxiety. "No. We're running out of time. We need to find her as soon as possible after we travel back. The chroniton field will alert the Collective to our presence. We'll need to move very fast."

Picard glanced over to Hugh. "Then we will need to find some way of locating her. Suggestions?"

"Well... Hugh, you said her implants are being reactivated, right?" La Forge looked over at Hugh, who nodded a terse assent. "So I could modify a tricorder to pick up Borg energy signatures."

Picard frowned. "To bring present-day technology back in time would risk severe damage to the timeline if it was lost or stolen."

"Not as severe as the damage will be if the Borg find her first," Hugh said fiercely. "Captain, you're already risking the timeline by attempting this mission. Your very presence on Earth is a risk. Taking the tricorder with you will minimise that risk by allowing you to find her more quickly and efficiently, and by diminishing the need for you to make contact with the population."

"Captain, I'd agree," said Troi. "I've had limited time to research our cover. The less need we have to stay for a long time or ask the locals too many questions, the better. Our disguise is going to be far from perfect."

"I see your point, Counselor, Hugh. Very well. Mr. La Forge, you may begin work."

*******

**Jericho, Oxford, 2002**

Cassandra had thought she was over the revulsion. But when Anastasia had taken her sweater off, revealing the full, bloody extent of her mutation, she'd very nearly thrown up again. It wasn't just the machinery - actually the tech, taken by itself, had a weird kind of Gigeresque _style to it. It was the tattered, shredded flesh in between, skin splitting, too-dark blood oozing from the wounds.  More Cronenberg than Giger, really. Or some hideously sick late-night anime._

She sat on the floor, staring down at her boots, absently twiddling her lip ring. Nowhere was really safe to look in this room. She'd used to think Anastasia's collection of Giger prints were cool, but now they were a little too close to home for comfort.

"Um, Anastasia?"

"Yes?"

She risked a brief glance up, noticed her friend methodically taping a dressing over the coupling on her wrist, carefully smoothing down the ragged flaps of flesh. Cass battled down a wave of nausea, and looked back down at her steel toecaps.

"I saw this Japanese film once, about this bloke who started breaking out in bits of metal and cables and stuff."

"Mmm. Yes. And what happened?"

"Um. He sort of accidentally killed his girlfriend and tried to destroy the world."

"As you do."

"Um. Sorry. That was... I wasn't trying to imply that you're..."

"But you're worried I _might_?"

"Well... No. I'm not. Not really. You're my friend. I trust you. But..."

"What could I do that would prove I'm still me?"

"Not destroy the world? Er. Seriously, I'm not really doubting it. You're behaving like you, just a really bizarrely calm in the face of absolute weirdness you. With added cybertech. Er. It's not that I have a problem with cybertech, I like cybertech, I'd be queueing up to get mine fitted when they invent it... but I don't know where this stuff is _from_. I mean there's got to be a catch. Someone's activated it for a reason."

"Mmm. Yes." Anastasia reached down a hand wrapped to the fingertips in tight, clean bandaging, picking up a fresh roll of bandage from the shopping bag. "The other cyborg told me _they_ were trying to tap into my repressed memories."

"I'm guessing _they_ are the ones who put this stuff in you in the first place? Got any idea who _they are?"_

"No, not really. I think getting the cybernetics implanted is one of those repressed memories."

"So you've got this, like, whole block of missing time? When was that?"

"The first eighteen years of my life." The statement was so absolutely deadpan that Cassandra stared blankly up at her friend, mouth opening and closing wordlessly.

"_The first eighteen years? Hang on a sec. So how old are you?"_

A long pause. "I think I'm thirty now."

"Bloody hell. You don't look it."

"Thanks. I think the aging well probably comes with the never getting ill as part of the whole cyborg package."

"In that case, I'm definitely signing up for the cybertech when it comes on the market." She was still avoiding looking at Anastasia, nervously twisting her bootlaces round her fingers. 

"Cassandra?"

"Yes?"

"Nearly done. I just need one more dressing putting in position. It's on my left shoulderblade. There's a patch of circuitry. Will you be okay to help?"

She swallowed hard, and looked up. The technology and raw flesh has been covered with neat, surgical dressings, bandages covering most of Anastasia's arms and hands. The masking of the more obvious signs of her mutation only served to highlight the greyish, deathly colour of her skin, not just pale but _white, like smooth white marble with the faintest hint of grey veining. Nobody could mistake her for a normal human._

_Okay. No bloody nastiness. So no freaking. Get up, put the dressing on. No big deal_.

She got to her feet, and took the dressing and surgical tape, pulling on the pair of surgical gloves she'd stolen from the medical student on her corridor, who used them to wash up in. Anastasia had pulled her long hair over her right shoulder, exposing the gleaming swath of technology set into white flesh. 

_Right.__ This one's not too bad. No bits of skin to clean off. Very simple. Just put the dressing on and tape it down._

She forced her hands to stop shaking, making herself think of this as just simple first aid, nothing severe. 

_Don't stare at the circuitry. I said don't stare at the circuitry. Right. Good. Put the dressing in position. There. Nothing to stare at now. Just tape it down and it's over. There. Good. Didn't freak out. Much._

She sat down heavily back on the floor, knees weak with adrenaline backwash. She was dimly aware that Anastasia had thrown her blood-soaked sweater in the bin, and was now wearing a Joy Division T-shirt and rummaging through the bags.

"Cass? You know this chocolate you got? Is it the seventy per cent cocoa stuff, or the eighty-five?"

She forced herself to snap out of it and reply naturally. "Eighty-five. You don't skimp on stuff like that at a time like this."

_Yeah. Thinking about chocolate rather than world-destroying. Still Anastasia._

*******

**The Kuiper Belt, 2373**

The rippling colours of transwarp opened to reveal crystalline blackness, and the shuttle dropped smoothly back into normal space. The translucent, faintly luminous gases Kuiper belt spread before them, comets streaming past like rain over a window. 

Hugh was back in his original position, linked again to the shuttle's systems. "The transition to normal space was unproblematic. No Federation ships detected nearby. I'm preparing to open the temporal vortex."

Picard glanced briefly back at the young cyborg, then at the viewscreen again. This was the crucial moment, the point beyond which they forsook the protection of Starfleet. Yet another flagrant violation of Starfleet orders to his name. No matter how brief their presence in the past, they'd still be spitting in the face of the Temporal Prime Directive. Even so, they had no choice.

Troi was staring fixedly ahead, eyes luminous with anxiety and determination: Crusher was nervously alternating glances at the viewscreen and glances back at Hugh. La Forge sat by the pilot's console, hands twisting restlessly together with frustration at his enforced inactivity. Hugh was perfectly still, organic eye closed, face rapt with concentration. 

And then another hole in space, full of shimmering cold-fire energy, opened before them. 

"Temporal vortex opened. I'm setting a course into it." Hugh's voice was as calm and emotionless as his stance.

And then the shuttle dived forward into the light, and through it to the past.

******

**Jericho, Oxford, 2002**

"So what are we going to do now?" 

Anastasia didn't answer immediately, hands gloved in smooth black leather fiddling with her long green velvet scarf, green eyes staring moodily into the full-length mirror.

Cassandra got up, licking chocolate off her fingers, and wandered over to her friend's side. "Look, it's fine. You can't see the bandages on your neck underneath."

"What if it slips?"

"Put a scarf pin or brooch or something on it. Something that'll hold it in place."

"What about my gloves?"

Cassandra sighed. "They look fine. Perfectly normal. Who's gonna to be staring at your hands, anyway?   Have some more chocolate."

"I need the cover to be perfect. I can't afford to have anyone guess what I am."

"Look, really, _they're not going to_. Most people, they're gonna see a very pale woman with bandages on her neck, they'll think 'oh look, a very pale woman with bandages on her neck', or maybe 'oh look, goth into kinky vampire stuff'. They are not, unless they're complete raving loonies, gonna think 'oh look, there goes someone who's turning into a cyborg'. Look, most people aren't really that good at noticing stuff. I crashed the Balliol garden party last year based on that principle."

"And that worked, did it?"

"For a bit, yes. Until they realised I hadn't got an invite and chucked me out. But I got four free glasses of champagne and a bowl of strawberries out of it first. But anyway, most people don't really pick up on only _slightly weird stuff. And even if they do, they usually can't be arsed following it up, unless they seriously think you're going to pose them an immediate problem. Now, if you were running down Broad Street with great big blades coming out of your hands and gun barrels sticking out of your chest, __then people might bat an eyelid, but not if you just look like a slightly weird person. Only nutters expect cyborgs. Normal people will think 'she looks a bit weird', and probably won't read more anything into it."_

Anastasia allowed herself a thin shadow of her old smile. "If you're sure."

"Trust me, I go around looking weird all the time, and nobody looks twice at me. People notice you less than you think, cos they're usually too busy worrying what you think of them to think much of you. And if we're going for the all-purpose Plan B, nobody is gonna be in any state to notice anything much."

Anastasia's smile widened, regaining something of its old brilliance. "Well then, let me sort my scarf out, and then we'll go and put the all-purpose Plan B into action. I think you mentioned more chocolate, as well?"

Cassandra grinned in response, and went and fetched the remains of the chocolate.

*******

**Geostationary**** Orbit, 2002**

Earth seemed much the same. The opalescent sphere of blue and white looked deceptively calm. Atmospheric pollution, poverty, warfare - none of it was visible from up here. It had, nevertheless, been oddly disconcerting to pass by Titan, Mars, the Moon and see only barren rock, none of the settlements of the present day built yet. 

The cloaked shuttle settled easily into a geostationary orbit, sensors trained on southern England. Hugh looked up at the viewscreen from his steady, watchful position at the interface. "Captain, we can beam you down whenever you're ready."

Picard glanced round at Troi and Crusher, meeting gazes full of tight, anxious resolve. They were prepared now - Crusher had implanted subdermal communicators before they left the _Enterprise, and Geordi's modified tricorder was weighing down his overcoat pocket. _

"I think we're ready."

"As ready as we'll ever be," said Crusher, forcing optimism, as they took their places on the transporter pad.

La Forge was waiting by the controls of the boosted escape transporter. "I've picked out a relatively inconspicious site, somewhere away from human life signs. It's a field near the canal, on the side away from the city."

Picard gave a single curt nod of approval. "Then beam us down, Mr La Forge."

And the shuttle dissolved into a haze of light - misty green, not the usual bluish-white - and then they were standing up to their ankles in long, wet grass and mud, late afternoon sunshine filtering down through patches of cloud. 

******

**The House in ****Jericho****, 2002**

Cassandra felt a sudden wave of irrational hope surge through her. Anastasia was behaving more like herself, the all-purpose Plan B was ready to be put into action, and maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be all right. Or at least, more all right than it was now. 

Anastasia swung round, her scarf now fixed in position with an elegant Celtic knot of silver and amber, her long black leather coat adding sweep and dignity to her lanky figure. "Ready to go?"

Cassandra looked back at her friend. Yeah. This was Anastasia, all scruffy, Bohemian black-clad elegance, all wild hair and billowing trenchcoat. This was the person she'd jumped off Magdalen Bridge with on May Day morning, the quizzer with the eidetic memory of obscure literary and scientific trivia, the fast bowler the Jordan College women's cricket team had been searching for, the person who'd painstakingly tutored her in fluid mechanics when she'd been predicted a Third in her first year exams, the person who'd listened when nobody else would. 

She grinned fiercely, surfing on irrational hope. "Ready to go."

*******

**Canal Reach, ****Jericho****, 2002**

"So. This is it."

The away team had come to a halt in front of a large Victorian house, once impressive but now faded and dilapidated. They'd managed to go unnoticed so far, the few locals they'd seen simply walking past them. Even his surreptitious glances at the tricorder in his inside pocket had gone unremarked - Troi had suggested that perhaps the locals had misidentified the device as a mobile telephone or portable computer, some small item of primitive electronics. It seemed she'd been right - the locals had seen what they expected to see. 

Crusher half-turned to him. "So what now?"

"Counselor, are you sensing anything?"

Troi half-closed her eyes, staring at the house. "Two minds. One...hope. Very intense hope. And very strong affection, and loyalty.  With an edge of fear... no, confusion... but fear as well. The other... I'm not sure." She shook her head, then turned to Picard. "Captain, I can't read Borg. If the other mind is Dr Glass, then she's already become too Borglike for me to make any sense of her emotions." 

Picard's eyes narrowed. "Then we need to move quickly."

He walked up the steps to the main door, checking the names by the buttons on the door: Hendriksen, Zaka, Glass. Assuming the buttons to be some kind of primitive door chime, he pressed the one marked 'Glass'. 

Crusher looked at him incredulously. "We just knock?"

******

"Who the bloody hell's that?"

Anastasia looked up from where she was systematically eviscerating her desk drawers in search of her wallet. "Shazia? Time's about right."

"But why'd she bother ringing your bell?"

"Probably locked herself out again. Go and let her in, I'll keep hunting for this blasted wallet."

Cassandra clattered down the stairs, past her bike, and unlocked the door. "Shaz? Oh."

*******

The person who'd opened the door wasn't what he'd been expecting. Small, female, spiky hair dyed a violent and unnatural shade of red, metal rings piercing lip, nose, eyebrow and earlobes. He'd read about these affectations in Kirk's report - they belonged to a fringe element of society that had been popular in the late twentieth century, characterised by belligerence and disdain for authority. Punk rockers.

"Who're you?" The girl didn't sound aggressive, just surprised. Her gaze flickered briefly over Troi and Crusher. "You're not Jehovah's Witnesses, are you? Cos we're Discordians and we don't want any."

"No. I'm here to speak to Dr Glass."

The girl arched an eyebrow, suspicion deepening on her face. "Um. I think she's sort of unavailable right now. I can take a message for her, if you want. Unless you're selling something."

Picard attempted an ingratiating smile. "Please. It's important."

Footsteps coming from behind the door, and a cut-glass English accent asked "Cass, who is it?"

"Scuse me." The girl pushed the door closed, but through it Picard could still hear her sharp Yorkshire accent.

"Some dodgy bloke in a suit. I swear, he's got 'government agent' written on a big neon sign on his head."

"Cass, what have I told you about watching too much _X-Files? Let me speak to him. He's probably just from the University."_

The door swung open again, and a tall, pale woman clad in black stood there. Brilliant green eyes met his, and her ironic smile collapsed into a gasp of horror. "_Locutus_?"

Picard staggered, still staring into her wide, shocked, all too human eyes. _That name... that ghastly name..._

And then the punk girl darted quickly forwards, face set in stubborn resolve, and slammed the door in his face.

**Author's Notes:** Canal Reach is borrowed from Colin Dexter's Oxford, specifically from _The Dead of Jericho. The film Cassandra refers to darkly this time is _Tetsuo: The Iron __Man_._


	9. Convergence

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 9: Convergence**

"_Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind_

_Cannot bear very much reality.___

_Time past and time future_

_What might have been and what has been_

_Point to one end, which is always present."___

T.S. Eliot_, Four Quartets: Burnt Norton_

**The House in ****Jericho****, ****Oxford****, 2002**

In a frenzy of rapid motion, Cassandra shot the bolts, slammed the chain on the door, fumbled the keys out of her pocket and locked it, ignoring the heavy knocking from the other side.  She swung round to look at Anastasia, who was leaning against the side of the hall, eyes wide and dazed.

"Well, I think we just found out who _they_ are. Told you he was from the government."

"I recognised him. From before. Oh gods, I'm _remembering..."_

"Locutus, right? Bad sign. Nobody who calls themselves after a Latin verb is gonna be a nice fluffy person."

"So what do we do now?"

"_You're asking __me? I don't do planning sort of stuff! I follow you around and make bad jokes! I'm not supposed to come up with plans!"_

"Cass, _please_..." Desperate sea-green eyes, full of confusion and pain.

"All right. I'll come up with a plan. We, er, we... we nip out the back and run like cowards?"

*******

Picard pounded on the door again, getting no response beyond a series of sharp clicks and thuds. He swung round, looking to the other members of the away team. 

"They've locked the door."

Troi climbed the steps to stand beside him. "Captain, I couldn't read her."

Picard shot a questioning look across. If Deanna couldn't read her, that meant she was already Borg. Nevertheless... "She seemed perfectly human to me."

"I don't think she's connected to the Collective yet. She's still operating as an individual, with human memories."

Crusher moved up to join them. "But she called the Captain..." she trailed off, not wanting to use that name.

Troi dropped her gaze to the floor. "I think the memory blocks are starting to weaken. She's accessing some Borg memories along with her human ones."

Picard turned back to the door. "Then we don't have long before the Collective accesses them too."

*******

They ran through into the kitchen, another burst of pounding on the door following them, then out of the back door and into the garden. 

"So which way now?"

Cassandra stood in the middle of the lawn. Go out of the back gate and left, and come out of an alley barely twenty yards from the front gate. And get spotted. Turn right, and walk down past the back of the terrace, and come out of a side street eight houses down. And get spotted. But have a better running start.

"We go right."

*******

Picard turned away from the door in frustration. "They're not replying."

Troi's eyes went wide. "Captain, I can still sense the other mind, the girl. She's terrified of you, and fiercely loyal to Dr Glass. I think she wants to protect her from you."

Crusher moved over, glancing up at the house's windows. "So what is she going to do? Lock herself in and wait for us to go?"

Picard's face tightened. "Then the Borg will get to Glass first. We need to make them listen to us somehow. We need to make them see we're not the enemy."

"We can't make them listen if they're determined not to," said Crusher. 

"No, we can't." Picard glared at the locked door, as if hoping to make it open by force of will. 

Troi stepped off the front steps, back on to the pavement, and glanced around. "Captain, the girl didn't strike me as the kind of person who'd be happy to be besieged. I sensed too much impulsiveness from her, too much nervous energy."

"Then, Counselor...?"

"I think they're going to make a run for it."

*******

Cassandra peered cautiously round the edge of the last house, then looked back up to Anastasia. "Scary Bloke's arguing with the ginger woman. The psychologist type's looking lost. I don't think they're going to spot us."

Anastasia frowned slightly. "The psychologist type?"

"Yeah. She's got that trying-a-bit-too-hard-to-look-approachable kind of dress sense. Like the people at the University Counselling Service do. That means either psychologist or social worker, and if I was a scary government bloke with a dodgy Latin codename looking for an escaped experiment, I wouldn't bring a social worker along."

"You're sure he's from the government?"

"Military, I'd guess. Maybe MI5 or summat. C'mon - if we move quietly we can be up Clarendon Street like a ferret up a trouser leg before they even spot us."

"You have such a way with analogies," murmured Anastasia.

"It's my Yorkshire roots showing. Right - on three, we go."

*******

"They'll run for it?" Picard asked. 

 "Yes - there'll be a back gate. They'll try and lose us in the city centre, probably...." Troi trailed off, her ivory brow furrowing in puzzlement. "They're..." 

She was staring with an air of bewildered yet furious concentration just past Picard's left shoulder. He swung round, Crusher following his stare, in time to see the two women dash out from a side street into the road. 

******

"Oh bugger. They've spotted us."

Cassandra glanced sideways at her friend, who was frozen in place, eyes locked yet again on the bald man's. She reached out, grabbing Anastasia's wrist, oblivious to the feel of sharp metal underneath the leather sleeve. 

"C'mon. You've stayed together so far, don't lose it now." 

"Locutus... " she muttered. "Your archaic cultures are authority-driven..."

_"Snap out of it!" _Cass yelled. The other three were walking up the street towards them, with the cautious air of those approaching a wounded animal, trying slightly too hard to look unthreatening, to avoid making any sudden movements.

Anastasia's eyes were focused on nothing, staring blankly ahead. "We will now proceed to Sector 001, where we will begin assimilation of your culture and-"

_"Anastasia!"_ In a fit of wild desperation, she stamped hard on the older woman's foot.

Anastasia swung round, wild hair flying, eyes suddenly alert again. "_Ow__! What did you do that-"_

_"Here's where we leg it!"_

*******

Glass turned to face them, suddenly alive,  poised and ready for flight. Picard raised his hands. "I mean you no harm-"

"I've heard that before," growled the red-haired girl. Glass tapped her on the shoulder. 

"O.U.P.," she said enigmatically, with the faintest hint of a nod. "Let's go."

The girl drew a ragged breath. "Gotcha."

And then they were running, across the road and up the next street, Glass in a swirl of black leather and hair, the other woman's heavy metal-plated boots hammering on the asphalt. Picard hesitated for a too-long moment of surprise, as Troi and Crusher moved up beside him.

"So what now?" Crusher asked.

"We try not to lose them." He broke into a run.

*******

They ran up the street, Anastasia veering left towards the yellowish stone wall of the University Press. 

"The gate's up this way!" shouted Cass, pointing ahead as her companion pulled away.

"Forget the gate, this is urgent!" Anastasia halted beneath the high wall, lacing her leather-clad fingers together. "C'mon - you'll need a leg up."

"You can't get me over _that_!" 

"It's only eight feet. Trust me. C'mon, or they'll catch up."

Cass, against her better judgement, planted one boot into Anastasia's hands and reached up, nearly falling backwards with the shock of finding herself propelled upwards with astonishing force. She corrected herself in time to grab the top of the wall and swing herself over, dropping to the tarmac on the other side with a jarring and less than graceful impact.  

A few seconds later, Anastasia pulled herself up by her arms, then swung elegantly over the wall to land effortlessly, catlike, beside her. 

"How the bloody hell did you-" Anastasia was a pretty good cricketer and a competent fencer, but she'd never shown any sign of that kind of raw physical strength, let alone that perfect gymnastic coordination. "Oh, wait, I see. The wonders of cybertech again?"

Anastasia grinned wildly. "Isn't technology great? C'mon - we can get into the town centre, lose them and then go for the all-purpose Plan B."

"You're back quickly," Cass observed. More than that - she seemed suddenly supercharged, her previous lassitude replaced by a febrile energy, eyes suddenly sparkling with a consumptive brilliance. 

"_Something is. At least part of it's me. Whatever it is, I think I like being it. Let's go."_

*******

Picard came to a halt as he saw Glass swing herself fluidly over the wall. He'd never thought of Borg as a particularly agile species, but with enhanced strength, machine precision and no bulky exoskeleton, it was perfectly possible that a Borg-human hybrid might move with such perfect predatory grace. There was no way he could follow them over that wall, but then he didn't need to. 

He pulled the tricorder from his overcoat pocket, checking the scanning program Geordi had set up. A green dot representing Glass' Borg energy signature moved slowly east across a map of Oxford. 

"She's moving east," he said, for Crusher and Troi's benefit.

"Heading for the town centre," Troi agreed. 

He consulted the map again. "Then we can head them off on... Walton Street. They'll need to leave these buildings there to get any further east." 

*******

They left the Press' main gateway at a saunter, moving with careful if slightly too rapid nonchalance. 

Cass glanced around, trying to hide her nervousness. "I think we've lost them."

"Don't relax yet. They've got a choice of two ways round to go. So either they're lost in the back end of Jericho or they'll be round that corner any second."

"So let's move out, then? Into town and towards Plan B?"

Anastasia nodded, as the man in the suit and his companions rounded the corner. 

"What did I tell you?" said Anastasia happily, and then turned and ran. After a fraction of a second's cognitive dissonance, Cass ran after her.

*******

Picard slowed from a flat run to a fast walk as they rounded the corner, in a possibly futile attempt to look inconspicuous. Glass and her friend were standing halfway up the street, in front of an overly-impressive neoclassical building of yellow-grey stone. 

The tall woman stared at them for a moment, smiled knowingly, said something quietly to her friend, and then ran. The girl stared at them in bewilderment for a moment longer, then essayed a rapid double-take and took off after her friend. 

Of all the things he'd considered going wrong with the mission, the idea that Glass might simply refuse to listen never even crossed his mind. Culture shock, he supposed grimly - the mindset of the twenty-first century was more different from that of the twenty-fourth than he'd imagined. He'd underestimated the undercurrent of paranoia and mistrust of authority figures that ran through this unstable period, in between the Second and Third World Wars.

They were running out of time, and there were worse things than looking conspicuous. Picard broke into a run.

*******

Anastasia leapt off the pavement, threading precisely through a gap in the traffic to reach the other side of the street. Cass followed, slightly behind, accelerating to catch up and to take advantage of the gaps she'd found. They charged onwards, past the curry house and the charity shop, and rounded the corner. 

Cass risked a glance back, noticing their pursuers held back on the other side of the road by the traffic.

"We're losing them!"

"Yes, but let's not get complacent! Keep running!"

They hurtled up the street, past the Applied Mathematics department, scattering bewildered undergraduates. 

"Where next?"

"Past the churchyard! Over towards the centre!"

Cass glanced back again - the other three had made it through the traffic and were now running up the street towards them.

"They're after us again! We've got to lose them!"

"That's the plan!"

Anastasia was making plans again. Good sign. Still slightly light-headed after the second shift in the power balance of their friendship in the past fifteen minutes, Cass followed Anastasia across the road, weaving smoothly through the traffic after her. 

They slowed to a fast walk as they crossed the churchyard that sat in the Y-shaped junction where the two roads into North Oxford merged. Cass was aware that she was overheating and breathing hard - she was far too out of shape, had spent the past few weeks behind a computer barely remembering to eat and sleep. Anastasia had the air of someone who could keep doing this all day if she had to. Obviously the whole cyborg metabolism was far more efficient than the standard human one. 

They passed the War Memorial and Anastasia plunged off into the traffic again, ignoring the pedestrian crossing bare yards away. Cass ran after her, barely avoiding the front wheels of the Cowley bus. 

"Why the bloody hell did you do _that_? You could of got killed!"

"They're in the churchyard. Now. We need to lose them fast. Have you still got my keys?"

Cass trawled through the pockets of her faded black combats, wasting precious seconds before she came up with a bunch of keys on an Amnesty International keyring. "Here."

"Great." Anastasia took the keys, then ducked rapidly behind the bus shelter and up a flight of concrete steps. 

Cass looked over to the churchyard, noticing their pursuers half-running across the pedestrian crossing. She followed her friend up the steps, finding her fiddling with one of the keys in the lock of a white-painted wooden door. "They're crossing the road! I think they saw me come up here!"

"Don't worry, they won't be able to follow us through here." Anastasia grinned knowingly, as the key clicked in the lock and the door swung open, letting them through into a small concrete courtyard lined with covered bike racks, glass doors in one side revealing a dingy reception area with shelves of pigeonholes and noticeboards covered with timetables, and a narrow passageway between two tall, ugly buildings leading off on the side opposite them. 

"Where's this?"

"The Maths Institute's bike sheds. We can cut through to the Parks through here, and lose them that way." 

A thump sounded from the door, and was followed by a short, angry burst of rattling. "And Scary Bloke's just found out it's locked. We'd better move before he thinks of heading for the Parks."

They ran up the passageway, delayed for a few seconds as they waited for the automatic gate at the other end to swing slowly open, then ran off across the back street. A flicker of something dark flapping in the distance caught Cass' eye. 

"I don't bloody believe it! They went round and found the back street!"

Anastasia turned, pushing her long hair out of her face, in order to see their pursuers running towards them down the narrow back street at the back of the Maths Institute. "So they did. Let's run some more, I have another plan."

The tall woman took off again, in that smooth cheetah-like lope of hers, with Cass tagging at her heels.  

"Dr Glass! Please understand, we simply want to talk to you!" the bald man called after them.

"_Don't believe him! There's an unspoken sort of 'after we shove some truth drugs in you and tie you to a chair with a bright light in your face' on the end of that sentence!"_

"_I don't! Less panicking, more running!"_

The sound of running footsteps behind them began again, pushing Cass into a renewed burst of speed. At the end of the street, Anastasia turned left down a narrow alley, vaulting smoothly over the chicane designed to stop cyclists. They ran along the cobbled alley, between the high wall of pale stone and the backs of the tall Georgian houses. 

"This'll take us back the way we came!"

"Trust me, there's a clever bit!"

They burst out into a small courtyard dominated by a gnarled old tree, the pale stone wall on two sides and a small half-timbered pub wrapped round the other two.

"The all-purpose Plan B? This is no time for-"

"No," Anastasia pointed at the tree. "_This_ is the clever bit."

"_What?"_

"Follow me." Anastasia planted one foot in a hollow a few feet up the tree's trunk, grabbed a branch, scrambled up to a higher hole in the trunk, then to another of the lower branches, then to the top of the wall.

"You're mental!"

"Come on!"

The running footsteps were getting closer, so she hurled herself at the tree, mimicking Anastasia's ascent with markedly less grace. As their pursuers entered the courtyard, the pair dropped down on the far side of the wall, onto a damp and well-manicured lawn. 

"How'd you work this one out?"

"This is Shaz's old college. I used this way in to crash the ball. If that doesn't lose them, nothing will. C'mon."

They crossed the college at a fast walk, Anastasia making the effort to slow to Cassandra's speed after the first quadrangle. 

"Um, Anastasia?"

"Yes?"

"I've just had a really nasty thought. You know how they kept catching up with us? Well, suppose one of the implants is some kind of tracking device? Then we really can't lose them, ever."

"Possible. But no reason not to try. Let's just keep running for a bit longer."

They crossed the main quadrangle, and left through the main gate. Standing on the tree-lined street, Cass glanced around.

"Hey, I was wrong. We did... oh bugger, no. There they are."

The three pursuers emerged from around the kebab van, walking fast whilst glancing around curiously. The man had some kind of device, something flat and gleaming that looked like a PDA, which he was staring at, until the red-haired woman in the suit touched his shoulder and then indicated them.

"Oh bloody hell. Do we run again?"

"Might as well." 

They fled down the street again, then turning the corner into the pedestrian precinct.

"Did you see that thing he'd got?"

"Yes. Looks like you were right."

"So now what?"

"I think we're going to have to talk to them, or possibly try beating them up. And try putting the all-purpose Plan B into action to get them off-guard."

"You sure?"

"Got a _better_ idea?"

"Okay. Then where do we go for for the all-purpose Plan B?"

"The usual?"

"Suits me."

*******

The sky was turning a soft grey now, the sun hidden and a fine rain filling the air. They ran past the Sheldonian, the stone heads carved on the pillars between the railings staring blankly past them, then on into a crumbling side street lined with tall, narrow town houses painted in faded pastels. Here it seemed that Glass and her companion had vanished. 

Picard slowed, reaching for the tricorder in his pocket. The green dot seemed to be further along the street and a little way to the south. Possibly she was in one of the houses, or had turned off down an alleyway.

Moving forwards, slowly and methodically, a narrow, cobbled alley opened before them, leading down a steep slope lined with eccentrically-shaped cottages painted strawberry pink to a small courtyard wrapped on three sides with black-and-white half-timbered buildings and filled with troughs of white  and near-black pansies. 

Troi glanced down the alleyway. "She's down there." She pointed slightly to one side, apparently indicating the east side of the courtyard. 

"In those buildings?" 

"I'm not sure. She's still very frightened, but defiant. She feels cornered, but she trusts Dr Glass. I think they're ready to listen now."

"Then we'll talk."

He pocketed the tricorder and set off down the alley. Lace curtains hid the windows of the cottages, and bicycles stood against the walls. This place was an enclave of something older and oddly, charmingly melancholic within the twenty-first century city, still and almost eerie in the grey rainlight. 

Just before the alley opened into the courtyard, a small passageway opened in the ice-pink wall, almost too low for Picard. On the other side, he caught glimpses of... trees, and fire, and people. 

Troi came up beside him. "She's through there. Feeling a lot happier and more hopeful, for some reason."

He ducked into the passageway, and came out in an almost medieval scene. There was a courtyard, full of trees and wooden benches, with a brazier in the middle, here surrounded by the tall houses of Oxford, full of people drinking and talking. To the right, more black-and white buildings were draped across that side of the courtyard. 

Crusher stepped out of the passageway on his left. "A pub. She led us all the way across Oxford to get to a _pub?"_

Troi smiled. "This was the plan. Glass' friend is feeling slightly triumphant, as if she's won a small victory. They did manage to get to the pub."

Crusher looked round the crowd in the courtyard, still shaking her head in slight disbelief. "So what now?"

Troi's smile widened slightly. "We go and look for her. I think the bar's through there." She indicated one of the half-timbered buildings. 

"Then we look for her in there," Picard concluded. It did make an odd sort of sense. If she was going to confront them, better make it on home ground. 

They crossed the courtyard, then entered the bar through a small black-painted doorway. Weaving their  way through the drunken patrons and low beams, they arrived at the bar. On the other side of the forest of brass and ceramic beer pulls, the tall, black-clad figure of Glass stood out amid the more mundane clientele. 

"So that's a pint of Old Rosie's Scrumpy, a pint of Dark Island, a packet of salt'n'vinegar crisps and... what're you having?" She turned to direct a calculatedly bright smile at Picard.

*******

**Geostationary**** Orbit, 2002**

La Forge was starting to get anxious. It had been nearly an hour since the away team had beamed down. From the readings he was getting, their life signs were stable but heart rate was slightly elevated, signs of stress and physical exertion. It seemed like someone had been chasing them - maybe the locals had turned nasty. They hadn't tried to communicate with the shuttle, so presumably they hadn't had a chance to get out of the public view, but they were taking a long time. Maybe finding Glass wasn't as easy as they'f expected it to be. 

Hugh stood a few feet away, organic eye flickering rapidly over an LCARS terminal. He'd stopped firing questions at La Forge after about half an hour, seeming to find his answers unsatisfactory. The young Borg had really been making an effort to understand his stumbling explanations of music, poetry, even cricket (although that had been a really tough one), but had obviously, on some level, not really got it. Geordi wished the captain had been around - if Hugh really wanted tutoring in the humanities, Picard was the person to ask. 

"Hey, Hugh -"

The cyborg glanced up quickly, fixing him with that steady, aware gaze. "Yes, Geordi?"

"What are you reading?"

Hugh indicated the terminal with one white hand. "I'm trying to understand Anastasia Glass. I don't know enough about humans to understand some of the other things she's written, although they seem to be important to her. I'm reading her mathematical papers. I can understand them, and through them something about her."

La Forge looked up at his friend's pale, intent face. "Hugh, why is it so important to you that you understand her? It's not going to help them find her faster."

"I know. I find her... interesting." The Borg youth turned to La Forge, uncertainty showing briefly on his face. "I'm experiencing... curiosity about her. She is, in some ways, like me. She's slowly becoming an individualised Borg, experiencing something beyond anything she's known before. I want to know if I can help her through the transformation."

The uncertainty vanished, replaced by a sudden, deep surge of compassion and pain. "When my individuality infected my ship, I tried to help some of the other Borg adjust to it. In many cases, I didn't succeed. Some of them... they couldn't act without the hivemind guiding them. They didn't regenerate, and they... they starved to death. I tried to help them, but I couldn't save them all. When Lore came, some of the other Borg killed the ones who had no volition. I tried to stop them, but there were too many."

A long, shuddering breath, and Geordi thought for a terrible moment that his protege was going to be overcome by tears again. "Anastasia is coming to the transformation from the other side. She's an individual becoming Borg, not a Borg becoming individual. Still, I can help her. I have to help her. She's..."

Hugh met Geordi's eyes, seemingly desperate to make him understand. "She has an interesting mind. She thinks things the Collective would never be capable of. She understands about chaos, and she... _she isn't afraid of it. It would be... a __waste, a terrible waste for her to be assimilated, even if she didn't have this connection to the Machine. All the ideas she would never be able to have."_

La Forge looked back at Hugh. That was more than compassion in his dark human eye. Everything he'd said about Glass seemed hauntingly familiar, the sort of thing he'd have said about Leah Brahms all those years ago. Yeah. Glass was intelligent, exotic, kind of striking if not classically good-looking, and vulnerable. Exactly the kind of person you'd expect a lonely, wounded, sensitive young man to fall for, all the while telling himself it was a purely intellectual admiration. 

He really didn't know what to say, whether he should encourage his friend or try to talk him out of this. Who'd have thought that he'd end up trying to give brotherly advice to a lovestruck Borg? Hugh simply stood there, watching him with that calm yet intense stare, holographic eye shimmering golden-green, waiting for a response. 

As it happened, he was spared the need to think of one, as an alert flashed up on the sensors panel. He glanced down. Incoming object, approaching too fast for a comet or meteor, heading... directly for Earth. Not good. He rapidly keyed in the commands for a refinement of the sensor sweep - mass, approximately 2.5 million metric tones, configuration...

Cubical. 

He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Hugh's face twist with a violent play of emotions - pain, fear, fury, a kind of ferocious protectiveness - and then settle into resolve. 


	10. Taking Sides

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 10: Taking Sides**

**"**_Do I dare_

_Disturb the universe?_

_In a minute there is time_

_For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse_**."******

T.S. Eliot**, _The__ Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_**

**The Pub, ****Oxford****, 2002**

Glass had carefully avoided their questions for the past few  minutes, overriding them with her insistence that she buy them drinks. The red-haired girl had kept up a wary position by her left shoulder, almost like some kind of bodyguard, glowering at them with blatant mistrust. They'd ended up at a table in another courtyard at the back of the pub, sheltered by a roof of clear plastic on a frame of heavy wooden beams, a brazier spitting dully next to them in the thin rain. 

They settled themselves around the table: Glass and her friend on one side, with their backs to one of the high medieval walls that separated the pub from the adjoining college, the Starfleet crew on the other, backs to the brazier. The girl slammed their drinks down in front of them (when pressed, Picard had asked for tea, Crusher for water and Troi for orange juice)  and then pulled her own cider close to herself, glaring over it as if defying them to try to spike it. Glass tore open the packet of crisps and pushed it to the centre of the table invitingly, offering them a slightly too convivial smile.

"So," she said, "Let's talk about this like civilised people."

Picard leant forward over the table. "Dr Glass, time is of the essence. It's vitally important that you accompany us."

"You'll forgive us if we don't immediately believe everything you're saying," snapped the red-haired girl. "So how about a bit of information for us, right? We get to know what's going on, and then we decide if we think going off with you is the right thing to do about it."

Glass put an arm around her friend's shoulders. "I'm with Cass. Tell me what's been happening to me, and then I'll see if I trust you. Tell me what I'm becoming." Her voice faltered slightly, and the girl reached up and squeezed her hand reassuringly.

Picard glanced around the courtyard. Nobody was too close to them, not at the adjacent tables, but still... "I suggest we adjourn to a more private place."

Glass stabbed a finger at him vehemently. "No. We talk _here." _

"Look, it's not like anyone's gonna think something's up. I've been sitting around here talking about being a vampire and running an international conspiracy, and nobody batted an eyelid. Talking about cyborgs and stuff isn't gonna get you noticed, they'll just think 'oh, it's those bloody roleplayers again'," Cass pointed out.

Picard stared at them dubiously. "Nevertheless, these matters are extremely sensitive..."

"Look, we'll tell you what we know and then you tell us what you know. My best mate's turning into a cyborg, right? Got that? Now you tell us _why!_"

The twentry-first century girl's eyes were bright with fear and indignation. Dr Glass tightened her arm about Cass' shoulders. "Cass is part of this. She's seen everything, all the implanted technology. She was there when it was actually coming through- "

The younger woman smiled shakily. "And bloody freaky it was, too."

"She needs answers as much as I do. I suggest you start giving them." Her pint of dark stout was forgotten, barely touched. The manufactured warmth and charm was fading, leaving behind something as cool and silky as polished steel and almost commanding. For an odd moment, Picard was reminded of Hugh.

Crusher leant forward urgently. "Dr Glass, I need to know how much of the Borg technology has regrown itself. I'm going to have to conduct some medical tests -"

"There's no bloody way you're sticking Anastasia in a lab and prodding her! If you didn't know what the tech was gonna do, you shouldn't of bloody well put it in her!" Cass leapt indignantly to her feet, spilling her drink as she reached over the table to gesticulate violently in Crusher's face.

Glass reached out and touched the girl's arm. "Cass, you're leaping to conclusions again. That's not good."

Crusher stared the girl down. "Listen to me. We didn't put anything in her. She was assimilated into the Borg Collective, made into a cyborg and wired into their hive mind. She escaped, we're not sure how. The implants went dormant, but now they're regrowing themselves. I just hope we've found her before the transformation becomes irreversible."

"Bloody _hell_... Cyborgs with hive minds? How the bloody hell did this fail to make the papers? The bloody remote-controlled cyborg rats blew up enough of a furore, let alone if someone was doing this with _humans."_

Picard and Troi shared a glance. Crusher's outburst had pushed them very close to the line, but there was really no point in any further deception. Glass needed to know about her own species, and the girl, Cass, knew too much already. He looked over at them both, as Cass slowly sat back down.

"You haven't heard about them because Earth hasn't contacted them yet. The first contact Earth has with the Borg is sixty years from now."

"Gods. I can't cope. Not just cyborgs, but time-travelling alien cyborgs  from the future? Too much weird in one dose." The young woman's belligerence had crumbled under shock, leaving her looking suddenly very pale and very scared. 

Glass slid her arm around Cass' shoulders again, pulling her comfortingly closer. "So... why am I turning into one of them _now?"_

"We really don't know," Picard confessed. "You were last heard of in 2367, on the other side of the galaxy. We have no idea how you got to Earth in 2002."

"I was wondering... I have no idea either. I have no memories before 1990, although some things I learned subsequently... felt more as if I was remembering than learning. Does that make any sense?"

"There seem to be some blocks on your memory, removing your recollections of having been part of the Collective as well as your human life before that. They're weakening now, and that's why we have to help you," Crusher said urgently.

"I see. Do I have some trauma in my past that's going to cripple me when I remember it? If so, it's pretty public-spirited of you all to hop in your time machine and come back to help me." A faint, cynical smile twitched at Glass' pale lips.

"As it happens, Dr Glass, this mission isn't entirely for your benefit."

"Thought not, somehow. Let me guess - Earth is at war with this Borg Collective, and you want to be around when I start remembering its military secrets? Although I'm not sure why you'd think I'd betray my own people, and if you were the sort of people who'd torture the information out of me, you'd've started already." The smile became wider and more deeply cynical.

"No," Picard said firmly. Although it was true, that Starfleet would want to pick over Glass for information, just as they would with Hugh... "You have information about the location of a device, a very powerful _weapon, abandoned by a very old and powerful civilisation. The Borg Collective is attempting to access your memories and find it."_

Glass simply  kept smiling coolly, her eyes betraying no flicker of humour. "I know, I contacted one of them. And so are you. But I still don't understand why you want me to betray my own people."

"They're not your people!" Crusher said, leaning forward, meeting Glass' steady green stare. "Nobody is born Borg. They abduct members of other species and forcibly transform them into their own. They conquer whole civilisations, destroy their cultures and convert their citizens into mindless drones!"

Glass got to her feet. "You'll forgive me if I fail to buy into the standard war propaganda. I think I'll take my chances with my own kind." 

She turned and swept off, Cass trotting uncertainly after her.

"We've lost her," Crusher said bitterly.

"She's right, you know," Troi sighed. "She doesn't have any reason to trust us or believe us. For all she knows, the Federation is no better than the Cardassians or the Romulans, and the Borg are a group of slandered dissidents."

Picard's expression hardened. "Then how do we convince her?"

A flicker of hope shone in Troi's eyes. "Hugh. We need to get Hugh to talk to her." 

*******

**Geostationary**** Orbit, 2002**

"Hugh, that's a Borg scout ship!" La Forge almost shouted.

The young Borg shot a brief, exasperated look at him. "I _know!" He leamt forwards intently over the consoles, slender white fingers moving across the controls with inhuman speed and precision. _

La Forge moved up beside him, glancing over his armoured shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to lock the phasers onto it, so that I can destroy it before it reaches Earth. Geordi -" the Borg youth looked up, gaze meeting La Forge's urgently "- I need you to set the phaser frequency to remodulate automatically. We need to damage it as much as possible as quickly as possible."

La Forge dropped back to his friend's side, performing the standard modifications on the tactical console. A flash of envy of Hugh's effortless understanding of technology surfaced briefly, then was buried under fear of the implications of this new threat. Earth was still divided into nation-states, still in the thrall of paranoia and war. It would only take one nuclear power to misinterpret the Borg presence as an attack by one of the others, and the Third World War would be sparked off prematurely. And that was as nothing compared to the threat the Borg themselves posed, the threat to the Federation's entire future and the galaxy's as well if they took Glass...

He forced the fears back, and completed his task, dropping back from the console with a nod to Hugh.  The cyborg's face was perfectly calm and focused as he keyed in the last few commands, as the shuttle decloaked for a second and the phaser beam slammed into the small cube. 

The other ship's course towards Earth halted, as it hung in the blackness, maintaining its position relative to the briefly-glimpsed shuttle. 

"Scanning for us. We've revealed ourselves as a threat," Hugh's tone was almost emotionless, the barest edge of controlled concern overlaying the information. His organic hand keyed in two commands within fractions of a second, his gaze never leaving the screen; the cloak flickered down again, and another phaser blast hit the scout ship. 

The dull greyish cube glided closer to them, away from the Earth. La Forge noted a shimmer of greenish light at the edge of the viewscreen, moving towards them. Hugh's gaze shifted for a second, following the human's. "Polaron beam. Probably calibrated to detect cloaked energy signatures. It's a standard tactic."

His line of sight flicked rapidly back to the cube. "We'll get one more shot before they detect us. Geordi, route all power through the shuttle's deflector array."

"You mean-"

"It very nearly worked for the _Enterprise. With the modifications I've made, it ought to work for the shuttle."_

La Forge leant over his console, frantically stabbing in the commands, then looked up to meet Hugh's cooly urgent stare. Before he could even speak, the renegade Borg entered one more command on the console, and the scoutship was pierced by a sharp blue phaser beam. For a second the Borg craft hung there, as the energy beam slammed into it. 

A flare of cold greenish light, and the small cube was ripped into a silent storm of dull metal shards. 

*******

**The Back Streets, ****Oxford****, 2002**

Anastasia Glass strode from the pub courtyard into the back alleyway, a thin rain silvering her wild black hair. Under the black iron gas lamp, she turned a sharp left into another alley, following it south.

"Anastasia? Hang on a sec, let me catch up!" Cass ran round the corner and down the alleyway, eventually drawing level with her friend.

"Where are we going?"

"Philosophically or geographically?"

"Oh, funny. This is _so_ not the time for naff puns. So where are we going, really?"

"Home, via the Radcliffe Camera and George Street."

"So not the direct route, right? S'not gonna lose them. They're tracking you."

"I need to think. Walking helps me think."

"Right." Cass looked down for a second, then back up at her friend.

"Did you mean all that stuff? About taking your chances with your own kind."

"Yes, I meant it."

"Oh." Cass bit her lip. "Then humans aren't... you're not thinking of yourself as..."

"I meant _they're_ not my kind. I severely doubt this Borg Collective is either. You're my kind. You're Jordan College, Oxford, a quizzer. I suspect the bloke in my dream is my kind too, if he deigns to show his face again."

"Right. so by 'your kind' you just mean, 'your sort of person', cunningly phrased so that both sides think you mean the other side so's you can start some kind of bidding war?"

"Close. I'm not planning on starting any sort of bidding war, just in keeping both sides on the hop until I can work out what's really going on without all the propaganda and carefully misleading information."

"Right. And how are you planning on doing that?"

"The bloke in my dream..."

"Thought it might come down to your mysterious cyborg blokey, somehow..."

"No, seriously.  I have a feeling he knows what's going on. And I have a feeling he's my kind of person, too."

"I don't know, flash of cheekbones and you're anybody's."

"This really isn't just a looks thing. This is a..."

"You're lost and lonely and bewildered and he's been being sympathetic thing, right? Been there, done that, got the miserable rebound relationship to prove it."

Anastasia suddenly swung round to confront her friend. "Cass, just _trust me, okay? I think I trust him."_

"Anastasia, you've never even bloody _met_ him. You don't even know for sure he even _exists _outside your own head."

Anastasia's lips tightened, as she stared out down the alley to the square beyond, to where the dome of the Radcliffe Camera was silhouetted against the leaden sky. 

"No. I don't. You're right."

Cass' indignation slowly dribbled away, leaving concern and guilt. "Anastasia, look, I'm sorry. You were really counting on him, weren't you?"

A long pause, bleak and grey as the rainclouds. "Yes, I was."

"Well... there's nothing to say you won't be able to. But you might not, and there's got to be a contingency plan for if you can't. What I'm saying is..." Cass took a deep breath. "Best to plan as if it's you and me versus the universe. Then if it's not, we get help we weren't counting on. But that's better than counting on help you might not get, right?"

"Yes. You're right."

"Okay." Cass paused, watching uncertainly as cold rain trickled down the older woman's suddenly masklike, emotionless face. "C'mon. We'll go home, and we'll plan."

*******

**Geostationary**** Orbit, 2002**

La Forge approached Hugh cautiously. "Looks like your modifications worked." 

The young Borg glanced at him for a second,  his expression unreadable, showing neither triumph nor grief. "Yes. They did." His gaze flickered back to the control panel.

La Forge dropped back into his old seat, still watching his friend. Hugh's rapid shifts of emotional register were confusing him. One minute, there would be such a vivid, transparent play of thoughts and feelings across his pale face, and then all of a sudden the sensitive young man would be buried behind a stoic Borg mask. It was as if he didn't know how to deal with his emotions other than repressing them or being consumed by them. 

"The sensors picked up a surge of power just before the ship exploded. It was a very close match to the transporter activation signature I remember the Collective using." Hugh's voice was mechanically calm still, with the slightest vibration of anxiety at its edge. 

"You mean they've beamed down? After Glass?"

"It would be the logical thing to do. If they can capture Glass and release her memory blocks, then they can use her to contact the Collective and  pass on the knowledge of the Machine's whereabouts. After that, they will probably self-destruct. Taking her with them." There was a definite taint of anger and pain colouring the last phrase, contaminating the cyborg's icy calm.

"Then the Captain could be facing Borg down there."

"I'm scanning for Borg energy signatures. They may not have found her yet." Hugh turned back to the sensor display, his deathmask composure resumed.

******

**The House in ****Jericho****, ****Oxford****, 2002**

By the time they reached Anastasia's house, the rain was coming down in earnest in a steady, stinging curtain, plastering Cass' scarlet hair to her skull and turning Anastasia's into soggy Medusa-like tendrils.** The older woman had remained silent as they'd walked back, deep in thought or despair, Cassandra wasn't sure which. **

Cass stepped to one side to allow Anastasia to open the back door. The space under the kitchen window normally occupied by Shazia's decrepit bike was empty, suggesting that Anastasia's housemate was still at the lab, or else had gone drinking with her colleagues. 

Anastasia pulled her keys out of her pocket mechanically and fumbled with the lock, eventually pushing the door open as they trudged through into the kitchen. 

Cass glanced around. "Look, sit down. I'll make tea, and we'll plan. Right?" 

Anastasia, unresisting, allowed herself to be steered over to a chair at the kitchen table. A quick ferret through the cupboards located a packet of Jaffa Cakes and Anastasia's stash of Earl Grey teabags, and Cass set about making tea. 

"So, what are we going to do?"

Silence. Despairing or thinking, she couldn't tell. 

"What about contacting these Collective sort of people, and asking them for their side of the story?"

No response. Not even a vague thinking kind of noise.

"Although, you must admit, it's not exactly a nice fluffy sort of name. Borg Collective, I mean. Has all sorts of nasty cyber-totalitarian communist kind of overtones. Mind you, I could have it all wrong, they could be a bunch of lovely happy techno-hippies, but somehow I doubt it..."

She was well aware that Anastasia couldn't hear her over the racket of the boiling kettle, but babbling for the sake of babbling was less scary than giving in to that horrible empty silence. 

"So I'm thinking, is the future just some big sort of Cold War all over again? Capitalists with shiny even teeth and apple pie versus scary hi-tech commies? Cos if so, then we're going for the third side. We're Switzerland. Got chocolate, watches and H.R. Giger. Suits me."

The kettle clicked off, and a mechanical whirring and hissing became audible in the sudden silence. Cass swung round, the back of her neck prickling with liquid-nitrogen horror, the kettle still in her hands.

There were two of them coming through the doorway, creatures like Anastasia had become, pallid and armoured, eyepieces clicking efficiently across the room. 

Anastasia's head jerked up, making eye contact with one of the creatures. "We will comply," she said, her voice flat and emotionless. She got to her feet, then walked over to them and dropped to her knees before them. The look in her eyes was a bleak mixture of despair and relief. as she pushed her hair away from her neck. 

The one Anastasia knelt before reached out with a grey hand, as dully gleaming tendrils of metal slid from its knuckles, as the other crossed the room to confront Cass.

And in a raw surge of blind, protective rage, Cass flung the boiling contents of the kettle into its face, then seized the breadknife from the rack behind her and hurled herself at the one threatening her friend.


	11. Losing Control

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 11: Losing Control**

_"Confusion in her eyes that says it all   
She's lost control   
And she's clinging to the nearest passer-by   
She's lost control   
And she gave away the secrets of her past and said   
I've lost control again   
And of a voice that told her when and where to act, she said   
I've lost control again."_

Joy Division, "She's Lost Control"

**The House in ****Jericho****, 2002**

Cass hurled herself blindly at the creature reaching for Anastasia's neck, knife raised. She bounced harmlessly off its dark metal armour, dropping her weapon, falling back winded against the older woman's kneeling form. 

The cyborg turned deliberately to face her, its cold silvery eyepiece locking onto her with a precise click. It reached for her neck with one pale hand, and tendrils of dark metal uncoiled from between its fingers, weaving and questing as if alive, slick with dense fluid.  Cass stared at them, frozen with bewildered horror. 

As it reached closer, blind mammalian instinct took over, and she dived under its reach, grabbing the breadknife up from the cold lino. Scrabbling up onto her hands and knees, she swung the knife savagely, driving it into the back of the creature's left knee, between the plates of its exoskeleton. It swayed, and she lunged clumsily past its legs, driving one boot behind her into the back of its right knee. 

The creature toppled rigidly forwards, hitting the floor with a metallic clatter. Cassandra scrambled to her feet, turning to look past Anastasia's kneeling form. Revulsion, guilt and fear knotted together under her ribs as the second creature turned and moved deliberately towards her, seemingly unaffected by the raw, scalded skin hanging from the bones of its greyish face and its swollen and blinded organic eye.

Still crouched on the floor, she grabbed at Anastasia's shoulder and screamed in her friend's face, "Get up!"

The creature was nearing them now, still impassive. She clawed frantically for another weapon.  "You've got to get up!" 

Her hand locked onto a solid object. One leg of the battered kitchen table.  Anastasia's empty eyes moved in her direction "We will comply…"

She yanked on the table leg with all her strength, toppling the heavy piece of wood on top of the fallen cyborg, forming a crude barricade between them and their adversaries. Anastasia was suddenly on her feet, staring blankly past her.

"Right!  Now we run again!"

She scrambled to her feet, clutched at her friend's arm and dragged her back into the hall, slamming the door in the creature's face. 

It was getting dark now, and a little evening  light filtered through the greyish-green glass panel at the top of the front door. The soft white noise of rain and traffic filled the house. Cass dragged in a ragged breath. The sudden normality made her want to cry, to run home and pull the covers over her head in the desperate hope that the whole afternoon had been just another nightmare from which she'd wake and do normal human things like laundry and lectures…

And then a hideously loud mechanical whirr and hum ripped through the evening quiet, as another two of the creatures rounded the bottom of the staircase. Cass stood frozen in despairing horror as they moved towards her, surreal in the dim orange-tinted light. 

A sudden noise behind her made her turn; Anastasia had slumped heavily against the white-painted panelling of the stairs, eyes rolling back in her head. Cassandra turned to face her, tugged back to reality by the immediacy of her friend's vulnerability. She swung round, scrabbled frantically against the side of the stairs, fingers closing on a metal catch, throwing open a door, pushing  the older woman's limp form through it, following, pulling the door closed behind her and holding it. 

The darkness of the cupboard under the stairs was oddly calming. Her mindless panic dropped away behind her, leaving a sudden hallucinatory lucidity. So she was here, really, and Anastasia wasn't in any position to help her, and The Enemy were in the house and… hiding in a cupboard had been a really, really stupid idea. 

The door shook behind her, the top panel splintering under a violent impact. Yeah. Really stupid. Nicely gift-boxed for The Enemy. She'd need another weapon. They weren't invulnerable, and they didn't move fast… 

Another crash, as a jagged crack appeared in the door. Quickly and methodically, her hands operating almost of their own accord, she drew her Swiss Army knife from her pocket, opened its largest blade…

Another crash, as a heavy cybernetic device barely recognisable as a limb broke through the wreckage of the top panel. And Cassandra shoved her full weight behind the door, pushing it open, trapping the creature by its arm and swinging it round against its comrade, as she lunged upwards and drove her knife into its unprotected white throat.

The blood was slightly too dark, and there wasn't as much as she was expecting. The creature dropped backwards, face impassive, body suddenly uncoordinated as a pile of scrap metal. Her throat burned with a surge of bile as the corpse clattered onto the floor, dark blood forming a pool under white flesh, around the blade still embedded in its jugular. It looked far too much like Anastasia. Like a person. Like she'd killed a person. 

The second creature recovered its balance with a high-pitched whine of servomechanisms. It bent down to its fallen comrade, pulled a small chunk of circuitry from its shoulder. Cass watched in horrified bewilderment as the corpse disintegrated into a pile of fine ash. 

A crash came from behind the kitchen door, and The Enemy started to move towards them with inexorable purpose. 

*******

La Forge stood by Hugh's shoulder, watching the young cyborg's pale, intent face cautiously.  White fingers flickered across the sensor console, the scrolling display reflected in the Borg's dark, anguished human eye. La Forge noticed, with a sudden wave of shocked empathy, that Hugh was biting down hard on his lower lip, almost hard enough to draw blood.

"Hugh, wait…" He found himself pinned in a sudden intense glare of frustration and fear. So human, so vulnerable inside that cold shell. 

"What are you going to do?"

"Find them. Before they find her… before they take her, at least."

La Forge drew in a difficult breath. "No, I mean… what will you do when you find them?"

"I'll stop them," Hugh said, absolutely simply and calmly.

"The away team aren't armed. They're not prepared for facing Borg. We'll need to beam them back up to get phasers to them…"

Hugh swung round. "Geordi, no, you don't understand. _I'll stop them. I'm the only one who can."_

*******

She was falling, dying, drowning, bleeding, transforming…

She couldn't feel her body any more, couldn't even maintain the awkward and distant puppeteer's control over it she'd had since Their voices started.

She couldn't see through her eyes any more, but there was still the visual impression of endless layers of baroque darkness, a warm greenish darkness that breathed with a smothering womblike sweetness. She couldn't hear, but the voices still filled her head, growing up and around her brainstem, shadowy ivy choking the windows of her mind. 

She was a bare, bleached skeleton with coiling briars weaving through her, blossoming within her empty ribcage, the dense, poisonously fragrant white roses the only life in her now. She was a hollow wreck lying on the bed of a vast dim ocean, the corals and weeds embracing all that was left of her.

_Those are pearls that were her eyes._

*******

They walked through the orange light of the sodium lamps, their heavy glow filling the air around the city and smothering the stars. The rain was beating down in earnest now, and Picard had turned the collar of his overcoat up against it. They weren't far from Glass' house now, assuming that the half-human woman would be returning there at some point. She'd done a good job of losing them in the back alleys after leaving the pub – she'd ducked out down a narrow passage between two buildings beneath an archaic lamp, and had been nowhere in sight when they'd followed her. Attempts at following the general direction in which they'd come had led them down a maze of high-walled narrow streets between the oldest colleges, before they'd finally walked out beneath the Bridge of Sighs and followed the street back past the Sheldonian towards North Oxford. 

"So we're decided, then?" Troi was shivering in the rain, her dark fringe forming wet spikes over her eyes. "We talk to her on her home ground. And we introduce her to Hugh." 

"I just hope we're not too late by then," Crusher said grimly.

"Doctor, we decided it would be futile to keep chasing Glass around her home city all night. She'll return home, and we'll wait for her there," Picard said shortly. Their failure to convince Glass had been oddly unsettling, the thought that their lack of persuasive power might have doomed the Federation horrifying.

A faint buzz under his jawline alerted him to his subdermal communicator. Pressing a hand to it, carefully nonchalant, he subvocalised "Picard here."

La Forge's voice filled his ears, his tone one of controlled panic. "Captain, you've got company down there. We're not the only ones after Glass."

*******

Cass shoved the limp, barely responsive form of Anastasia ahead of her. She wasn't looking back. She didn't need to, their footfalls were so dully heavy.  There were three of them now, she could hear them moving towards her. One from the kitchen, having dislodged the table. One from the hall, having disintegrated its fallen comrade. One more from the living room., only just emerging.

_Tactics.__ Right. C'mon, I must've learnt something from playing all that Diablo II_. There's lots of them and only one of you, and they're lots harder than you. What do you do? Other than get killed. __

She ducked past the newel post on the bottom of the staircase, noticing grimly that the one from the living room had interposed itself between her and the front door. No escape.

_Right.__ You don't let them surround you, cos then they drag you down. You back yourself into a doorway or a narrow corridor, make them come at you one at a time…_

She pushed the taller woman behind her, up onto the first of the stairs, kept backing up the flight, keeping to the side nearest the wall.

_…then you hack at them at your leisure with your sword. Gods, I wish I had a sword…_

She wasn't moving fast, but then neither were they, forming themselves into a neat rank at the base of the stairs. Anastasia was still going where she was pushed, but not in a way that suggested her mind was having anything to do with it. Still, they were climbing… nearly at the top of the flight now

_Shame they're not Daleks, else we'd be safe now…_ An edge of hysteria bubbled up in her throat, twitching her mouth into a manic and humourless grin.

*******

A flare of desperation swept through Hugh's white face, tinted by the glow of the sensor display. "There's five of them on the surface… no, three now. Two were destroyed. It seems she's fighting back, at least, but she'll need help."

"Wait, Hugh… you're not going to beam down yourself, are you?"

Hugh's expression was absolutely, terribly calm now. "Geordi, it's the only way."

The cyborg turned from the console, heading back across the shuttle towards the transporter. 

La Forge stepped into his path. "No, Hugh, wait! Think about this. You'll stick out like a sore thumb down there!"

Hugh paused for a moment, and La Forge leapt on the chance. "We've contacted the captain. He's on his way there."

The Borg youth's organic eye burned with a sudden, painful surge of resolution. "No, Geordi. There are three Borg drones down there. Anastasia can't hold out much longer. The captain won't be able to stop them, but I can."

La Forge realised that there was a light, cool hand resting on his shoulder. "Let me go to her, Geordi. I'm her only chance."

The cyborg's grip was as gentle and as inhumanly strong as water. There was no way that he could have stopped Hugh, even if he'd wanted to. 

La Forge drew a long breath. "Good luck, Hugh."

*******

She was falling for centuries, her arms stretched out as if in a futile attempt to fly, winds full of words roaring past her head. And then there was water, so cold it numbed her to the bone, so warm her veins opened and poured the warmth of her blood into it. 

The water was crushing her as she sank, the pressure becoming intolerable. If she opened her mouth, let the sea in, the pain would stop. She'd drown at last, become a calm piece of flotsam carried by the currents. 

_Fear death by water._

*******

She pushed Anastasia down onto the landing behind her, grabbed wildly for the nearest heavy object. There was a vase on the ledge of the window next to the top of the stairs, a solid cylinder of greenish glass filled with polished pebbles and twisted hazel twigs. It shattered on the exoskeleton of one of the watching Enemy at the bottom, eliciting not even a flinch. She backed across the top step, hunting around for more weapons, trawling frantically through her rucksack.

Biro. Black nail varnish. Duct tape. Spare floppy disc. Notepad. Dog-eared Iain M. Banks novel. Phone. Caffeine tablets. Half a bar of fruit and nut chocolate. Paper clip_.__ I can't kill someone with a paper clip. What kind of person kills people with paper clips? You'd have to be some sort of weird supervillain hitman type. __Oh bloody hell, there has to be something more offensive than this… what, bad language?_

"Oh _bugger!" It seemed to sum up the situation adequately._

A flicker of misty green in the corner of her eye had her swinging round in a taut panic, only to see one of The Enemy standing next to her, stooping over Anastasia's limp form.

With a wordless scream of primal mammalian loyalty, she lashed out with her fists at its face, only to find her wrists held by an impossibly powerful and precise machine grip, and a cold hand of flesh and blood that seemed to hold the same steely strength. Instinct had her bringing her knee up hard.

A ghastly scream rang across the house, and Cass went limp with the pain shooting through her leg, as her kneecap shattered against smoothly curved and unyielding metal. 

The creature lowered her gently to the ground.

 "You didn't have to attack me. I'm on your side. Here to protect Anastasia." Its voice was surprisingly soft, the voice of a gentle young man, with the barest hint of mechanical overlay on certain syllables.

Cassandra whimpered with pain and surprise. The cyborg tilted his head, his mechanical eye flashing a soft bronze-green. "You're hurt. I'm sorry." 

She was too shocked, and in too much pain, to make coherent words any more. She was dimly aware of heavy footsteps vibrating on the stairs below her, aware of a sudden flash of protective rage flaring on the chalk-white face of the man-machine standing beside her. He moved forward, astonishingly fluidly and swiftly for the rigidity of his armoured form, silent but for the whining of overstressed servomechanisms, and lunged forward with his mechanical hand, fingers curved back under the palm, the lethally sharp appendage where a thumb should be extended. Silence, again, but for a dull thump and clatter as something fell and tumbled back down the stairs. 

The cyborg beside her drew his hand back slowly, revulsion and self-loathing playing across that strangely expressive face as he contemplated the unnaturally dark blood on it. 

*******

Picard hammered on the black-painted door, hearing no response, then swinging away in frustration. 

Crusher looked up from the tricorder screen. "Captain, I'm detecting four Borg energy signatures in there." 

Glass and three others. Crusher's tight expression conveyed the unspoken corollary of her statement – that going in there, against three Borg, unarmed, would be no less than suicide.

Troi glanced back at them, dropping her intense scrutiny of the house. "I can still sense the girl, Glass' friend. She's terrified, and in extreme pain, but still human."

Two innocents. Three Borg. Suicide, yes, but there was no alternative. 

Picard jumped down from the doorstep, and ran for the nearest side street.

*******

It wasn't the first time he'd killed. He'd had to, when Borg driven mad by individuality had attempted to kill their former comrades, when Lore had sent Borg after him and his allies. It never got easier. To look into the face of someone so like himself, someone who could have been him but for a chance encounter with the Federation, and then strike to end it all, to crush what chance there might have been for it to be an I…

The human girl with the unnaturally red hair was trying to pull herself up by the railing next to the stairs, uttering faint squeaks of pain and muttered, incoherent words. "Oh _bugger_ oh _ow__ ow ow… oh _arse_ oh _bugger_ oh…" _

He turned to her, noticing with some surprise that she seemed to have pieces of bright metal implanted in the flesh of her face, their purpose unclear. "Will you be all right?"

"I've _broke my bloody __knee, what d'you think?" she hissed through teeth clenched with pain and fury.  "I can't _fight_. I can't even bloody _stand up_."_

"There are only two of them left now. They should be pausing to recalculate their tactics. I can get Anastasia away from them."

The girl caught the top of the railing and pulled herself upright with a sudden access of angry determination. "Oh no you bloody don't. I'm not letting her out of my sight."

"I can protect her. I can help her."

"Says you. She's my _friend_." She pushed herself towards him, hand over hand along the rail, hot blue eyes glaring into him. 

He could see Anastasia past her, slumped against a wall further down the landing, her long limbs splayed gracelessly, her green eyes staring into nothing. 

"How long has she been like that?"

"Not long. Why?"

"They're trying to access her memories. It looks like they've already taken over her motor functions."

He started moving towards her, but the red-haired girl slammed a hand onto his shoulder, swaying on her precarious support, screaming briefly as her weight fell on her injured leg for a moment. 

"_You keep away from her, right?" she snarled. There was no way she could have stopped him, not even if she'd been healthy, but she still seemed perfectly prepared to try. _

He met her gaze, unwilling simply to push past her. He couldn't help but respect her futile, fragile resistance.  "Look at her. She's trapped inside her own body. I can let her out, give her back control."

Some of the diamond hostility melted out of her eyes. "I was like _them once," he gestured towards the waiting drones at the foot of the stairs. "I was freed. By my __friends.  I know about them, and I know how to fight them. Let me go to her. I can help her fight."_

"You're her mysterious dream bloke, aren't you?" The girl's tone was grudgingly respectful. "She was counting on you."

"I… contacted her mind before, when her subspace transponder activated. I'm here to help her."

The girl tilted her head, eyeing him sceptically. "Okay." She nodded sharply in Anastasia's direction. "Go on, then."

He moved past her, careful not to brush against her injured leg, then knelt awkwardly beside Anastasia's limp form. The girl watched him suspiciously as he laid his organic hand against her cheek. Her skin was warm to his touch, but not as warm as human skin would be; lack of moisture had left it scaly with dryness, beginning to crack in places. Her long black hair was still smooth and soft to the touch, falling in heavy waves across his palm. Now that he was here, beside her, he found himself paralysed with awed fascination, noting the hollows beneath the curve of her cheekbones, the sweep and arch of her narrow, feathery eyebrows, the subtle shading of green and grey in her irises…

The dull thud of drone footsteps and the hum and whir of servomechanisms dragged him out of his reverie. The girl looked across at him, eyes wide with terror. "There's one coming!"

He started to rise to his feet. "No! You fix Anastasia. I'll… do something bad to it. Somehow," the girl shouted, swaying awkwardly against the railings.

There was no time for contemplation now. He brushed thick black hair tenderly aside, baring the base of her skull, then pressed his knuckles to the skin and hesitated. What he was about to do amounted to invasion of her mind, the next best thing to assimilation. He'd never assimilated. He'd been a scout drone, a collector and processor of data, for the brief period of his life in the Collective before the _Enterprise found him. The assimilation tubules in the back of his organic hand had lain dormant since he'd left the maturation chamber._

The footsteps were closer now. The girl drew in a long breath, and braced herself against the railings. "Well, having heavy things dropped on them tends to ruin most things' day…" With that, she swung herself over the railing and dropped.

There was a thud, a clatter, and a terrible scream of pain, then silence.

Hugh bit down on his lip again, tasting his own blood. He had to act now, to make some use of Anastasia's friend's sacrifice.

The assimilation tubules in his hand triggered and slid free from his flesh.

**Author's Notes:** Anastasia's dream sequence owes a lot to the poetry of T.S. Eliot. The lines _"Those are pearls that were his eyes" _and_ "Fear death by water"_ are from _The __Waste__Land _I: The Burial of the Dead._ I'm assuming that _Doctor Who_ is fictional in Amaurot-Oxford, and that's where Cass gets her reference to Daleks from – she is, of course, wrong, as anyone who has seen _Remembrance of the Daleks_ will know. I'm also assuming that the Marvel Comics universe, specifically _Daredevil_ is also fictional, and that's where the whole paper clip business comes from – Cass of course has not yet seen the film, but you the reader will understand if you have._


	12. The Meaning of the Thunder

**Amaurot**

**Chapter 12: The Meaning of the Thunder**

_"We have lingered in the chambers of the sea_

_By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown_

_Till human voices wake us, and we drown."_

T.S. Eliot, _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_

He hadn't expected it to feel like this. A sudden rush of unbelievably intense sensation as his assimilation tubules buried themselves in the skin of her neck, skittering along her nervous system, sending back glittering ripples of bioelectric impulses. He was dimly aware that somewhere his life-support systems were scrambling to compensate for cascading physiological changes, biosynthetic glands flooding his bloodstream with adrenaline and tailored endorphins, lungs straining for breath and then shutting down as internal replicators took over pouring out oxygen. Hugh was certain that he was malfunctioning, about to die. Assimilation wasn't supposed to feel like this. It was supposed to be a coldly functional procedure, not like being ripped apart by an ecstatic rush of data. 

He came back to a kind of equilibrium, muscles trembling with innumerable tiny spasms of resonant bioelectricity, aware that one tubule was lodged in her carotid artery, nanoprobes streaming into her bloodstream from his own internal factories, whilst the other was webbed against her spinal cord with countless delicate tendrils. He was aware of her body as if it were his own; the stinging and itching of her drying and cracking skin, the slowing beat of her still-organic heart, the coldness eating through her skin and into her muscles, the odd tingling of metal pushing into and melding with flesh… 

No pain. She was unable to feel pain. Neural blocking, standard procedure in assimilatory surgery. They'd probably also disconnected her motor functions and some of her emotional responses. Again, standard procedure. He'd need deeper contact to remove those, to free her from the prison her own body had become.

With the utmost delicacy, he unwove the contact tendrils from her spine, and sent the tubules probing up into her brain stem. It took all his self-control to hold back, to search for the precisely right place to link to. Instincts he didn't know he had, shouldn't have had, were screaming at him to plunge straight into her brain, immerse himself in her consciousness. 

He bit down on his lip again, the pain dragging him back from the impulse to lose himself in Anastasia's mind. He needed to stay objective, maintain enough of a sense of himself to perform the nanosurgery required to return Anastasia to herself, to give her back her senses and emotions. An involuntary shudder gripped his body at the thought of how potent the link would become once she could feel again. It shouldn't be like this. He shouldn't be having to fight his own intoxication with the sensations of her. 

He let the contact tendrils slide lightly into position, feeling them curling in around the edges of her brain, releasing finely calibrated streams of nanoprobes into her cerebral fluid, rebuilding connections, replacing severed nerve fibres with delicate circuitry, exquisitely aware of each sense coming back online, breathing ever more synaesthetic richness through her nervous system and into his. 

Still not enough. She wasn't free yet; something was holding her consciousness locked back, unable to reach the outside world, trapped in the dark behind her eyes. Her neurotransmitter was still pulsing with energy, the nerves around it firing wildly. The sensory centres of her brain were boiling with electricity, feeding back on themselves in a phantasmagoria of nerve impulses.  He pushed the contact tendrils deeper, feeling the bioelectric impulses flooding back into his own brain, and allowed himself to fall into Anastasia's hallucinatory sensorium.

*******

Her head dropped back, letting her hair stream up like seaweed as she sank into the cold greenish depths of the sea. The whisper of the tides tugged at her, calling to her, calling her to be once with them again. She was losing the feel of herself, feeling her dream-body become as numb as her real body had, feeling the sea seep in through her skin, stilling fear and freezing doubt. 

And then, as her eyelids were dropping closed, cutting off the last of her sense… Light. Light from above, from the surface, from the air where things had shapes. Golden and green.

The sound of another voice reached her through the soft beckoning of the sea, a voice from above her and outside her, calling with desperate tenderness. 

She awoke, and began to drown. 

*******

Silvery needles of rain beat down, glinting in the dull yellow of the archaic sodium lamps, prickling coldly against Picard's scalp. Blinking rainwater out of his eyes, he sprinted down the alleyway between the terraces of Victorian houses, counting the back gates  as he passed them, Crusher and Troi at his heels. This one. Rusted iron, opening onto an overgrown lawn and several ratty and unkempt rose bushes, their red and yellow petals spilling in disarray over the path. 

Two steps lead up to a once-white door, the window beside it granting a view of white-painted cupboards and cracking plastered walls. No Borg visible. The doorhandle turned easily in his hand, and his feet hit black and white lino.  The wreckage of a heavy wooden table lay against one wall, and the door beyond it was ajar. The acrid scent of Borg death hung in the air. So Glass was fighting back, with some success.

He crossed the floor, moving quickly but cautiously, pausing to select a heavy carving knife from the knife block. Crusher nodded with grim approval, weighing an empty wine bottle in one hand. Without phasers, whatever crude weapons they could find would make all the difference. 

Beyond the door there was a thud, a clatter and a terrible, human cry of pain.

*******

She clawed her way upwards, struggling against the icy currents pulling her down. Struggling towards the light. There was less green in it now, more copper and red. Fire. Warmth. 

_Datta._

There was no pain in her chest, but she knew she had to breathe soon, or die. She wasn't a creature of the sea, although it had tried to make her one. The currents wove around her, like vines, like voices, pulling her back down.

And they weren't just currents now, but creatures, grey creatures spawned out of the sea itself, reaching up for her. She twisted, swam desperately for the surface, letting the natural lightness of her body raise her towards the light. 

Her palms met the surface, and touched only dense grey ice, the vision of light and flame made cold and diffuse behind it. Her hands were too cold, too sea-bleached, to make any impact on the ice. The lift given by her last lungful of air was failing, and she was falling again, sinking back towards those green depths and the icy-silky voice that coiled within them. 

A sudden access of rage made her lash out, striking at the cold barrier that was condemning her to drown bare breaths from light and air. Driven by the heat of her fury, her hand splintered the ice, weakened as it must have been by the fire beyond. And her hand drove up into the light, and another hand caught her wrist.

_Dayadhvam_.

She felt the voices below her turn from silk to cold polished steel, as she reached up desperately into the red-gold-copper light, feeling her fingers close about satiny burnished metal, as she pulled herself up with all that was left of her strength. 

A sudden, dizzying shift in perspective, and she was hanging from the trunk of a vast tree, pinned by the spear in her side. Golden-green light poured down on her, and the shaft of the spear erupted into white blossom. She closed her hands around the spear, and pulled it free from her flesh. 

_Damyata_.

And then she was lying on short, damp grass under a clear indigo sky, gasping for breath. The air smelt of rain and roses, and hands of smooth flesh and metal were locked around her own. 

*******

Picard ran across the hallway, past the shattered wreckage of a cupboard door, swinging round the newel post at the end, as a tangle of human and Borg limbs slid down the stairs towards him, crashing to a halt nearly at his feet. Anastasia's red-haired friend sprawled awkwardly across the limp form of a Borg drone, one of her heavy boots wedged against its jaw, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle, her limbs skewed and motionless. A second drone, its throat and life-support tubes ripped out with some kind of piercing weapon, lay prone beside them in a pool of dark blood and some kind of silvery liquid. 

The third of the drones paused halfway up the stairs, turning to regard the Starfleet officers with a coldly predatory gaze. Picard met its stare, heart racing. Everything he hated the most, everything he'd die to defeat, stood above him there. The knife felt pathetically primitive in his hands, as he moved forwards, never dropping his eyes.

"I am Locutus of Borg. Stand down."

The drone's eyepiece clicked onto him, the soft mechanical whirring of its cybernetics increasing in pitch for a moment. Somewhere in the back of Picard's skull, voices coiled around his brainstem, whispering… _Locutus of Borg: status, missing, contact intermittent. Instructions originating  from Locutus of Borg are now considered irrelevant. New secondary objective: reclaim Locutus. __Primary objective remains: locate Nine of Twelve._

The delay was just long enough, the spatiotemporal communications pulse just slow enough. As the drone's head snapped around, its body turning jerkily to reacquire its original target, Picard was standing beside it, close enough to drive the knife up between the abdominal and thoracic plates of its exoskeleton, up to where knowledge that wasn't his told him there would be the primary life-support node…

He released the knife as dark blood gushed freely from the wound, as the drone fell backwards, smoke rising from its twitching corpse, the smell of blood and burnt circuitry filling the hallway. Looking down, he saw Crusher glance at the tricorder again. "Two more, Captain!"

One more Borg. Unarmed, he cleared the last few stairs, swinging round on the landing. Anastasia Glass lay limp in the arms of a kneeling Borg drone, her hair pushed back, assimilation tubules buried in her neck. 

**Author's Notes:**  Anastasia's dream sequences continue to be influenced by the poetry of T.S. Eliot – here _The Waste Land still, and also _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock._ The words __"Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata," are Sanskrit, meaning "Give. Sympathise. Control." It's from the fable of the meaning of the Thunder in the Upanishads, also quoted in _The Waste Land V: What the Thunder Said.__


End file.
